Copyright © 2023 by Mary Haverstick

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Crown, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

Crown and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

Hardback ISBN 9780593727812

Ebook ISBN 9780593727829

crownpublishing.com

Book design by Jo Anne Metsch, adapted for ebook

Cover design: Christopher Brand

Cover image: Ralph Crane/Shutterstock

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PRELUDE

When I first met her, I still believed in astronauts and heroes, in shiny planes and glistening rockets, and in America and her freedoms. I was there to tell her story, an American story. It was also a feminist story, that a woman could perform better than a man even in his own game. In that respect, it’s true—she never let me down.

There was always something clandestine and dark about our meetings. Never was bread broken as friends. Not even a pot of tea or the offer of a glass of water. Instead, with shades drawn in a tiny living room, hushed tones were used to speak of when America was in a cold war and a space race, and how this slim blond woman had come to know almost every major figure in America’s quest for domination.

Jerrie Cobb is humble, and she’d even tell you that directly, in case you missed it. She didn’t like publicity in spite of having appeared on the big three TV networks and in almost every Time-Life publication. A portrait of dualities may have been there from moment one, but how often do we look beyond the first refracted light? The stronger image in a double exposure always catches our eye, and our mind makes sense of it, organizing it into something we recognize—into something distinctly human—into something very much like ourselves.

I suppose I always wanted to be an astronaut, a modern-day explorer bravely hurtling into the great unknown. At its essence, this is also filmmaking. You approach a story that you’re intensely drawn to for reasons of which you’re never quite sure, but you fling yourself into a multiple-year obsession, and only when you’re done do you begin to understand what the story was all about. You just take the leap and know the rest will come.

MYRTLE

I was in a narrow art gallery at dusk when I spotted a frail woman dancing with a cane to piped-in music, and I just had to cast her in my next feature film. I had a lovely dance number planned where, in one woman’s imagination, strangers waiting for a medical test break into a dance, and I could now never see the scene again without Myrtle Cagle in it. It turns out Myrtle had early onset dementia, but her bright light was still shining from within, and her daughter agreed that Myrtle would love to be in a film. In fact, they both volunteered.

As we left the gallery that evening, the daughter handed me a book, The Mercury 13 by Martha Ackmann. She said they’d brought it to give to Myrtle’s doctor, whom they’d seen earlier that day, but he hadn’t deserved the gift. It told the story of thirteen female pilots who took NASA’s astronaut tests in 1960 and shocked the world by passing. By tearing down gender barriers at NASA at a time when only men and chimpanzees need apply, they’d paved the way for Sally Ride. Myrtle was one of them, one of America’s first female astronaut candidates. Perhaps I should consider this story as a film, they suggested.

Filmmakers are approached with story ideas nonstop. I always tell people to champion their own story, that no one will take their idea forward with the gusto they will. But this was different. This was an astronaut story. At nine years old, I’d written my own little letter to NASA asking how I could become an astronaut, and I was told I couldn’t because girls couldn’t test jets. Neither could grown women. It’s never a good idea to send a nine-year-old a rejection letter.

Martha Ackmann’s meticulously researched book stepped through every detail of the star-crossed episode. Through her comprehensive work, you could glimpse the dreams of the thirteen women who must have, for one brief moment, allowed the fleeting thought that they had a chance to walk shoulder to shoulder with the men. A chance to imagine a world that recognized them as equals. A chance to brave the stars.

As I studied the Mercury 13, I found out there were numerous books and documentaries on the subject, but none had pierced the public consciousness. Whenever I mentioned that there had been a secret women’s astronaut program, the response was universal: It would make an incredible film. How had Hollywood missed it? Well, their loss was my gain. I was now committed to making this movie happen.

It was clear, looking at the dramatic arc from a film perspective, that one woman was essential to the story. Yet this key protagonist hadn’t participated much in the other books and documentaries to date. She was vital to the narrative because she’d taken the astronaut tests before the other women and, after passing, organized the opportunity for the other twelve. When NASA canceled the program, she was the one who demanded and received a congressional hearing, where for two days the idea of allowing women astronauts was debated. It was under the klieg lights in this high-octane forum that she made her deeply personal plea for inclusion. The world wasn’t ready for her, and she was not only defeated, she was publicly humiliated in the process.

During the testimony against her, she sat silently while John Glenn, with half her piloting hours, proclaimed there were no women qualified to become astronauts. He said that knowing she’d just passed the very same tests he did. “My mother could probably pass the physical exam that they give pre-season for the Redskins, but I doubt if she could play too many games for them” was a typical Glenn one-liner that had the assembly laughing in her face. The proceeding ended with congressmen crowding Glenn for his autograph. Her dream of space was dashed, and she soon left the modern world behind to devote her life to serving the Indigenous people of the Amazon jungle, delivering medicine and supplies by air. She was recognized for this work with a Nobel Peace Prize nomination in 1981.

When I first reached out to her by email, she was in her mid-seventies and still flying the Amazon skies every day. I was told by the woman managing her affairs that a message could be relayed but not to hold my breath. She would be a hard person to reach, but reach her, I must. I just had to meet this Jerrie Cobb.

JERRIE

My first sighting of Jerrie was, appropriately, at an airport. My patience had paid off, and a full year after my initial outreach, she agreed to meet me about the possibility of telling her story for a film. We met for a brisk lunch at the Baltimore-Washington airport as she arrived for the NASA fiftieth anniversary gala. John Glenn would also be there, but old tensions had eased, and their relationship had come full circle. Still, there was a twinkle in her eye when she told me she asked Glenn why she shouldn’t have gotten the geriatric shuttle seat instead of him since she never had her first chance. The defeat still stung, but Jerrie was careful not to appear bitter, and I didn’t get the impression she was.

As I greeted her in the skyway, I offered to get her luggage, but all she’d brought on this trip was a canvas tote, the size of those given out free with a subscription to The New Yorker. She was wearing old lady jeans, walking sneakers, and a denim shirt. The NASA fiftieth was to be a black-tie event. I figured she had a plan that extended beyond the tiny bag but decided not to ask.

Jerrie was nice but not necessarily warm, as we ordered fries, a grilled cheese, and a Coke at the airport lounge. Actually, I ordered that. Jerrie didn’t eat much, at least not when I was around. I stated my case, that I was drawn to her story, but I’d never done someone’s true story on film before, and I wasn’t here to talk her into it. I felt strongly that I was the one to do it, but the feeling had to be mutual or I would walk away. It was an interesting negotiation from the start, and one I sensed was fraught for her because there were a few tense moments. Why, I wasn’t sure.

Jerrie had some stipulations, if we were to tell her story. From her perspective, the other twelve women had participated at a much lower level than she had. She’d been the first to ace the physical exams and had then gone on to tackle flight simulators, endurance tests, and spatial orientation studies, something the others hadn’t done. Then when the women’s program was scrubbed, she shouldered the fight for equality almost single-handedly. These are the reasons, Jerrie argued, she shouldn’t just be central to the film—she should be its sole focus. The others had told their stories in recent books and documentaries. She hadn’t, and if she were to do so now, she wanted it to be mostly about her.

Another stipulation was how I handled a nemesis, Jackie Cochran. Cochran was the most celebrated female aviator of the era, but by the time the space race came to be, she’d aged out of consideration. Not one to be content on the sidelines and having married into great wealth, Jackie was the benefactor who had paid for the women’s testing. In the end, Cochran destroyed her own creation by testifying against the women, arguing that their inclusion would delay the Mercury program. She also seconded Glenn’s assessment that the women’s fitness was unproven. Jerrie wanted me to cut Cochran from the film completely, something I said was impossible historically and dramatically, but I agreed to limit her.

Jerrie’s demands took me by surprise, but when I thought about it, I understood. She’d taken her lumps and gone the distance. This would be her story, and hers alone. Her stipulations meant I would need to craft a tightly focused piece based on her perspective, but she assured me I’d be given the in-person interviews and access necessary to do so. I agreed to her ground rules and felt deeply honored that she trusted me to bring her life story to the screen.

Many had approached her, and many had been ignored. Why she chose me, I’ll never know. She liked me and said she could see herself in me. I, in turn, liked parts of her, but the woman I’d just met was not what I expected, and even in this first meeting, I saw an edge.

ACT ONE

WHO WAS SHE?

ONE

Redbird

1.1 THE DRIVE

It was a cold clear winter morning, driving up the New Jersey Turnpike, as I rehearsed in my mind the sequence of steps that might get me to Redbird. I’d already been working with Jerrie to tell her story for over two years, and I was now driving to the Newark Airport hotel to see her about problems with the film.

Over those two years, starting in 2009, our relationship revolved around the goal of telling her space story, which would have been in the same vein as Hidden Figures, but our work took place eight years before that Oscar-nominated movie portrayed other influential NASA pioneers. Jerrie and I had met many times for the interviews from which our screenplay was developed. I held the exclusive option to her space story rights, which contracted us together for interviews and access to her historical materials. Independent dramas often take years to develop, research, and produce a screenplay, but we were through all that and into the casting phase. Our project had been going swimmingly—until I received a mysterious warning from a new acquaintance, and a pall dropped over the project. I was now on my way to confront Jerrie about all that had transpired.

The problem, unusual as it sounds, was that I was briefly befriended by a high-ranking woman from the Department of Defense who, by her own admission, worked in espionage. I’d met her on a weeklong beach-camping excursion, where she arrived after me and parked herself in the campsite adjacent to mine. She was intelligent, fun, and interesting, so my partner and I spent quite a bit of time sightseeing with her, during which she shared riveting details about her spying career, work she had conducted overseas fighting the war on terror. I’d met this extraordinary woman seemingly by happenstance, although in retrospect, I’ve wondered exactly why we met.

For a few weeks after that trip, we stayed in touch, and I even met up with her for lunch in Washington, D.C., while I was scouting locations for the film. But about then I noticed her habit of constantly dropping subtle warnings into the conversation about my film project. These comments took the form of non sequiturs that passed by so quickly, I wasn’t even sure I’d heard them. Initially, I wrote them off as odd comments from someone who knew nothing about the film business. That changed when she visited my hometown.

Claiming to be passing through Pennsylvania, she stopped by my studio, and I happily gave her a tour. Things were fine until we reached the research station for my film, where she began grilling me about the dates of the historical materials I had on hand and lecturing me about levels of government classification. I explained that I had nothing classified here, that this was fifty-year-old history. She quickly zeroed in on binders of materials I’d gotten from Jerrie herself, and without opening them, she claimed that those in particular were “classified and needed to be in a vault.”

This was outrageous on so many levels. I hadn’t told her much about the project and certainly nothing that would give anyone a concern. Not about to be pushed around in my own studio, I laid down the facts—that these were an older woman’s private letters, photos, and clippings, all of which I had legal access to and many of which were already public. It didn’t matter. The warning was given. Something about Jerrie’s documents was “classified,” and my project might have problems.

Her negativity about the film created a strain in the friendship, and she soon vanished from my life as quickly as she came. After her bizarre warning, the project did hit a quick series of hurdles. Hurdles are normal in films. Warnings about classified documents are not. I decided it was my duty to look into it, to see if we were on solid footing, or if something about this once-secret program had hit a tripwire even now. So one day, as I was sitting at my workstation pondering this mystery, I googled “Jerrie Cobb” together with “CIA.”

June Cobb

What came up was a woman named June Cobb. I had seen her name before while researching Jerrie on the internet but had never clicked on it. This time I did. The search paragraphs were filled with gibberish, subject lines like “HSCA CIA segregated collection, box 40,” that made no sense. I waded deeper. More gibberish. These were government documents—something to do with the CIA—something to do with assassination—something to do with the Kennedy assassination! I read on.

Whoever this June Cobb was, her name appeared in thousands of pages of government files that were part of the investigation into Kennedy’s death. The documents were dense, incomprehensible at first. I groped for a paragraph that made sense, that actually said something concrete. Slowly a picture of June emerged. Her full name was Viola June Cobb. She was three years older than Jerrie. She was a blond, like Jerrie, but a CIA employee. She was an agent. She knew Fidel Castro! This woman was interesting. She had evidently worked in Castro’s office as a translator while she was spying on Fidel Castro! Who was this woman?

And then with a few clicks of my mouse, I knew. June Cobb was from the same hometown as Jerrie—Ponca City, Oklahoma. She was the same height as Jerrie, same weight. June had also lived for a time in Jerrie’s other hometown, Norman, Oklahoma. She was in the Civil Air Patrol, so they were both in aviation. Both were fluent Spanish speakers. Both had lived extensively in Latin America. Both left home in their twenties for South America. And then the point of no return: when I saw that June Cobb lobbied on behalf of the Indigenous tribes at the Amazon headwaters—the same Andean mountain people to whom Jerrie had devoted her life. Both women had visited the isolated region in the early 1950s, when almost no white people had ever been there. Both advocated for causes related to the coca-leaf-chewing habits of the natives, and both had exited the jungle from their youthful expeditions burdened by a lifelong jungle-borne disease.

FIGURE 1A. Jerrie in South America, snapshot, early 1950s.

Consider, for a moment, the chances of any family allowing their college-age daughter to travel to the Amazon to contact Indigenous people in the 1950s, at a time when early expeditions were reporting that the jungle was riddled with cannibalistic headhunters. What was the statistical probability that two girls named Cobb of identical description and similar ages would be involved in aviation from Ponca and Norman, Oklahoma, with both in the Civil Air Patrol, both being Spanish speakers, both traveling to that remote tribal region and then leaving with a jungle-borne disease, while also being involved in top-secret U.S. government programs? I quickly imagined that those odds were about as good as two people sharing the exact same DNA, which I now suspected they did.

1.2 ASTONISHING SIMILARITIES

The similarities between the two women will, from here forward, be referred to as the Astonishing List of Similarities. I will state right here and very clearly that the CIA files say they are not the same person. In fact, the agency and a few other sources have photos of June, images that do not look like Jerrie. A woman named June Cobb lived out her life in New York City, and she matches the photos of June from her CIA tenure. Jerrie has maintained that she is not June. Both women have census records and other documents that record them as two people, and both have family members and friends who will vouch for them. All that is true.

However, the more you dig into the biographies and whereabouts of the two women, the more synchronous their lives appear. So much so that the accrued mountain of similarities becomes an equal and opposite body of evidence with its own gravitational pull. Just as you cannot deny the existence of a Jerrie and a June, you also cannot deny that large sections of their lives moved in tandem.

Take, for example, their participation in aviation. In 1946 both lived in Oklahoma City: June was organizing the local Civil Air Patrol squadron, and Jerrie was an enthusiastic junior member of the patrol and a constant fixture at local airports. While Jerrie’s career landed her in the National Aviation Hall of Fame, June would later tell a CIA interrogator that she was too “dumb” to fly a plane. However, one of her co-workers in Mexico City told the Kennedy assassination investigation that June “flew an airplane” and “had a twin sister involved in aviation.” That gem was delivered by Dave Phillips, a legendary CIA officer who was well positioned to know her secrets.

When both women came of age, they both promptly left Oklahoma for international travels, setting their sights on South America. June’s first stop was Guayaquil, Ecuador, where she was hired for a PR position in Jerrie’s field, aviation. Aviation was also what had brought Jerrie down to Guayaquil, where upon her arrival, she was arrested for June’s specialty, spying. Of course, it was all a big mistake, and Jerrie was released with the help of the State Department, but while detained she’d picked up Spanish from the Ecuadorian guards. June was already fluent in Spanish, having mastered it through summer courses in Mexico City the year before.

Once in South America, they both worked for aviation firms serving identical countries—Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Peru. But their youthful odysseys soon drew them both into dark corners of the Amazon jungle. These tropical expeditions affected the arc of both their lives, because both flew the skies beside a dashing new love who was also a pilot. Both considered their respective affairs to be the love of their lives, and both relationships ended tragically. Neither would find true love again, while both carried the emotional and physical scars for years to come.

It is hard to overstate the astonishing similarities of their native encounters. In the early 1950s, June found herself in the jungles of Ecuador, clearing land alongside isolated tribes who were helping to set up a narcotics laboratory for her then-fiancé. Meanwhile, Jerrie was stranded by engine failure and hopped a rickety barge to the headwaters of the Rio Naya. With Indigenous women cooking her meals, she rafted through the tribal region that would beckon her back later in life, where just like June, she found herself clearing land alongside Indigenous tribes, who were once again dealing with Westerners in the manufacture of cocaine.

Provably both women, during these early years in South America, intersected with U.S. government agencies, and both were also working at the behest of those agencies for aspects of their South American work. Meanwhile, both claimed Ponca City, Oklahoma, as their home base, where both made frequent visits between trips.

Starting in 1956, both turned their attention from South America to Cuba. June began flying in and out of Havana with her drug-smuggling boyfriend, while Jerrie took to island-hopping her plane around the Caribbean with Cuba as her pit stop. Perhaps not coincidentally, Fidel Castro had just arrived by boat from Mexico and was mounting his revolutionary takeover of the country. Castro would soon become the operational target for June, who joined the CIA in the spring of 1960. Jerrie had entered her own secret program weeks before, having passed the astronaut tests and agreeing to organize women pilots to build on her success.

Let’s recap. Blond, Cobb, Ponca, Norman, aviation, Guayaquil, Amazon headwaters, drug stings, spy capers, Civil Air Patrol, remote natives, clearing jungles, pilot boyfriends, fluent Spanish, lifelong diseases, government recruitments, top-secret programs, and Castro. They are now thirty.

In their thirties, both women found themselves in lofty company. Both could count among their friends numerous Latin American leaders, titans of industry, and celebrated artists. Both had connections in the White House who were standing by if they had trouble clearing U.S. customs when reentering the country. Incredibly, the two small-town Oklahoma blonds were circulating with the intellectual, political, and industrial elites who were shaping world history, particularly as it pertained to Latin America. The Astonishing List of Similarities had expanded to encompass not only the arcs of their lives and travel itineraries but also the class of influential power brokers with whom they socialized.

Now for the lightning round. Both were employed by Time-Life. Both developed movie projects. Both worked for oil companies. Both had their biographies land on American doorsteps in syndicated news stories. Both testified to Congress about those biographies. In fact, Jerrie visited a congressional hearing room seventy-two hours before June was whisked in for her secret session.

Neither had a home base by the early 1960s, relying on the hospitality of friends. Both traveled the same geographical circuit of cities in perpetual motion. Both had indications of wealth but no visible means of support. Both disappeared for extended periods during their lives. Both were well connected to the national and international press. Both used pseudonyms with the initials “J.C.”

Both opposed aspects of John F. Kennedy’s policies. Both were in Mexico City six weeks before Kennedy was killed. Both intersected with events surrounding Kennedy’s death. Both adopted a reclusive lifestyle during the assassination investigations.

Both were alive when I started to look into them, but both had declining health at that time. I contacted both, but only one agreed to meet me and be interviewed. And my favorite astonishing similarity of all: both had either been arrested, persona-non-grata-ed, or kicked out of a country for spying.

The above Astonishing List of Similarities is only partial, and I’d found many of these within the first few days of discovering June.

1.3 SOMEONE WHO MET JUNE

I was still processing the shock of discovering June when I emailed Jerrie and told her we needed to talk. I explained that a woman from the Defense Department had visited my studio and delivered strange warnings about our film, leaving me with concerns that I could discuss with her only in person. She got back to me promptly, and we set up a rendezvous in New Jersey. I now had three weeks to prepare.

I figured three weeks would be plenty of time to sleuth out whether Jerrie was June, because all I needed to do was find someone who’d met her. A few googles later I learned that John Newman’s 1995 book Oswald and the CIA quoted June Cobb in several key chapters. The author’s footnotes indicated that he’d interviewed her five times, so I assumed he’d be able to settle the matter of double identity once and for all. As it turned out, nothing gets settled that easily when you enter the murky and troubled waters surrounding June Cobb.

Newman got back to me on his sixtieth birthday, and we spent much of that evening on the phone. He began researching the Kennedy assassination after a career in army intelligence, and he is known for his encyclopedic knowledge of the Kennedy documents. Not long into our call, I sent him an email with Jerrie’s photo, hoping for an immediate identification. He told me that Jerrie was similar to the woman he had met as June Cobb, but he couldn’t be sure they were the same. He couldn’t rule them in as one person, but he also was unable to rule them out.

While some of Newman’s interviews with June were by phone, he told me they’d spoken in person at least once, in a Manhattan restaurant, where he’d put her at ease by explaining that he’d been a senior intelligence officer. No matter how many moving images, still pictures, and videotapes of Jerrie I supplied Newman with over the years, the status of his identification would remain the same. Jerrie could be the same woman he met as June Cobb, but he could never be sure.

Newman had retired from his work on the JFK case before I met him, and he had no plans ever to circle back to it. After our first call, he and I collaborated for about two years, and I credit him with teaching me how to read and evaluate complex government files. The JFK documents can be mystifying at first, but during this period I developed a fluency with them, thanks in great part to him.

So now I knew that after sitting across the table from June, hearing her voice, and watching her mannerisms, a man with a firsthand understanding of intelligence couldn’t be sure if she was Jerrie Cobb or not. And with that unsatisfactory answer in hand, I shifted the preparations for my meeting with Jerrie back to the place where June comes most vividly to life—in the acid-free boxes of the National Archives.

1.4 LEARNING MORE ABOUT JUNE

As I pored over the CIA documents in the JFK Assassination Records Collection, a fascinating portrait of June was emerging. She had left small-town Oklahoma for South America in the late 1940s and never looked back. After spending numerous years in the Amazon jungle, she emerged to work with U.S. agencies on the raid of her fiancé’s Colombian drug factory, a criminal ring with sales turf in Cuba. From there, she became a fervent supporter of Fidel Castro, relocating to Havana at his invitation to help with his fledgling government. Once there, just as she had done to her fiancé, she began working with the American authorities against him.

June’s CIA file consists of thousands of pages. She was recruited into the agency in Havana in the spring of 1960, then relocated to Mexico City in mid-1961, where she was stationed for the CIA until 1966. After that, she worked for the agency on an ad hoc basis out of New York City until at least 1968 and perhaps beyond.

The CIA documents sometimes describe June in her early days as Fidel Castro’s secretary, but by working with U.S. intelligence, she was actually a double agent. But June wasn’t just any double agent. She was a spy targeting America’s number-one enemy at the height of the Cold War, when we were trying to depose him by any means necesssary. She was working right under Castro’s nose, while urging his so-called loyalists to betray him. Had the Cubans unmasked her, she’d have taken her last breath before a firing squad, a fate that did befall her collaborator, William Morgan. I quickly realized that this June Cobb, up to now a historical footnote, might well be among the most daring spies who ever lived.

But not every story was so flattering. A woman who’d seen Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico City wanted to report what she knew to the authorities, but June Cobb intervened. That woman did report about Oswald, but not through Cobb’s preferred channels—and afterward claimed June maimed her pet cat in retaliation. If there was any truth to that allegation, then June intimidated a witness in the JFK assassination investigation. Worse yet, she did so in such a horrific way that I was unable to comprehend any woman doing it.

Certainly not the woman I’d spent many an hour interviewing: A trailblazer whose activism paved the way for Sally Ride. An altruist who received a Nobel Peace Prize nomination for her devotion to the Amazon people. A woman who’d become quite fond of me, and whose trust I had earned.

My review of June’s CIA file was far from a sterile academic exercise. I was trying to figure out if the woman I knew as Jerrie either was June Cobb or was tangled up in her spy operations—and that answer now carried immense ramifications: Had Jerrie defrauded my investors by withholding the true nature of her work with the government? Was she part of some kind of a double identity illusion? And what relationship might she have had to Kennedy’s murder?

The fact remains that Jerrie invited me into her life despite any secrets she was protecting. She often said she felt God had brought us together for a reason. I believed that telling someone’s story was a deep honor and a responsibility, but I felt a more profound and abiding responsibility to the truth.

I would spare no question in the name of hurt feelings as I drove to Newark to see her that morning. She owed me answers, and I was determined to get them. But more important was that I’d discovered something eerily familiar as I followed the tributaries throughout the Kennedy assassination saga. So now, as I was driving to see her, I knew that no matter what else transpired, I had to somehow navigate the conversation to Redbird.

1.5 ON THE DAY

Redbird Airport was a small executive airfield in Dallas that in 1963 catered to the private plane market. During my three weeks of preparation, I kept coming back to the comment that June Cobb “flew an airplane” and “had a twin sister in aviation.” Obviously, I was wondering if the two women were one, which led me to look for a plane similar to Jerrie’s within the assassination saga. After all, since June was discussed in thousands of documents in the JFK Assassination Records, maybe just one would mention her plane.

I didn’t have much to go on, but back then Jerrie flew a twin-engine, seven-seat Aero Commander, so if she was June, that was probably the plane she was flying. After an exhaustive search of the JFK Assassination Records and witness interviews, lo and behold, I found a similar plane that piqued my interest, out at Redbird Airport.

On the day of the assassination, not long after the president was shot, local residents became concerned about activity on an outer runway at Redbird. A private twin-engine plane had sat on the runway for over an hour, revving its engines without taking off. The engine noise was so loud, people were having trouble hearing Walter Cronkite delivering his grim updates on TV. Some even became concerned that the plane was connected to the crime, so they reported the incident to local broadcast outlets, putting the strange event into the record.

Nobody knows what Lee Harvey Oswald’s exit strategy was to have been, but every step he took after leaving the scene took him closer to Redbird. First, he hopped on a bus exiting town toward the airport. When that bus stalled in traffic, he jumped out and was handed a transfer ticket good for another bus. He then taxied to his rooming house and, from there, walked, so it is hard to say where he was headed. But the bus depot in the direction he was walking could have taken him to Redbird. And upon his arrest, the prepaid ticket, good for a Redbird bus, was still in his pocket. If Jerrie and June were the same person, could the secret she was hiding be about Redbird?

If June Cobb was hiding any big secrets, I realized I might be the only person in the world who was in a position to get them. In 1978, when Congress initiated its inquiry into President Kennedy’s murder, June was atop their witness list. Investigators asked the agency to produce her, but the CIA claimed it had lost track of her and suggested they look for a “June Cobb Sharp” in New York City, implying that her married name was now “Sharp.” It wasn’t. The mysterious agent whose life shadowed Jerrie’s was never brought forward to say what she knew about Kennedy’s killing.

So as I drove to Newark for my conversation with Jerrie, I knew I needed to steer the topic to Redbird. I even rehearsed in my mind the series of questions and answers to get there. I’ll never forget focusing out my jeep’s windshield and thinking, “No matter how angry she gets and before she stomps off, whatever you do, just ask about Redbird.” My heart was pounding and my adrenaline was on blast as I pulled into the Newark Airport Sheraton, the spot she’d chosen for our meeting.

As I entered the lobby, there she was, as always, eagerly awaiting me with an ear-to-ear smile and arms flung wide open. Up to and including that moment, I couldn’t have fathomed that she’d have been a willing participant in the president’s death.

Yes, I thought she was June Cobb, and based on what I’d seen in the CIA documents, I suspected she might have come away with radioactive information about the president’s killing. But I knew her, knew of her patriotism and beliefs, religious and political. There was nothing radical, nothing hateful there. She even struck me as someone who voted for Kennedy. The cat-maiming story wasn’t in keeping with the woman I knew. I wanted to hear her side, and I was truly hoping for a plausible explanation.

I just couldn’t imagine what that plausible explanation could be.

The Conversation

We sat down in the restaurant for breakfast, and I ordered eggs while Jerrie ordered nothing. Throughout all our conversations, whether at her home or at a restaurant, she never ate or ordered. On this morning, I noticed she was wearing a hint of blush, something I’d never seen her do before. She was sporting electric-blue track pants and a goalie shirt, as if ready to walk on a treadmill, and her hair was pulled into a tight ponytail, as always. She was bright, relaxed, and happy to see me. I felt I was doing well at giving the appearance of offhandedness as well as warmth. I didn’t want to come off any differently than I always had, and certainly not as accusatory or cold.

As my coffee arrived, I updated her on the film and said we’d hit a few snags. I’d previously explained in an email how the self-described espionage agent from the Department of Defense warned me about our project, and Jerrie knew it had rattled me. As I restated those concerns, I noticed how nonplussed she was while I described the arrival of a federal agent. I had expected her to be skeptical, since I put warnings from federal agents and unicorns in the same category. Apparently, she did not. She accepted my story that an agent had appeared on my doorstep, without any mention of its rarity. She even boasted that she’d had many encounters with “spooks,” as she called them. I confessed I’d never met one.

Jerrie wanted me to quickly resume work on the film without concerning myself too much with this visitor. I said the woman who came to my office was, by my estimation, a CIA agent, explaining that in one of our conversations, the woman had even suggested that I visit the CIA website and consider putting myself to use for our country.

“Oh, that’s no big deal. They tried to recruit me, too,” Jerrie said.

Really?

“Sure. Many times. I wouldn’t do it.” Her gaze then cut the air with a certain intensity, as she warned, “Don’t you do it.”

I felt the power of her warning and sensed it was spoken from experience. I assured her I would never sign up. I’m an independent filmmaker. I don’t answer even to Hollywood, let alone to the government. I told her I considered work for the CIA to be patriotic and necessary, just not for me.

“Good,” she said, pleased that I wouldn’t consider joining.

By this time, I urged her to order something rather than me eating alone, so she got an orange juice. The restaurant had wide-open seating with no other customers, yet a middle-aged couple just entered and chose the table right beside us. If I stretched my arm out to the left, I could touch them. They never said a word but sat silently eating their breakfast throughout our entire visit. I wondered if we were being monitored, and I wasn’t going to let that stop me.

I didn’t take notes and recorded my thoughts immediately afterward. What follows is a reconstruction of parts of the conversation.

Mary: Wow, so they tried to recruit you for the CIA? What happened?

Jerrie: Oh, sure. Many times. I wouldn’t do it.

M: How’d they approach you the first time? Do you remember?

 J: Well, the first time, they tried to get me on a drug-smuggling accusation and force me to do it.

I flashed on June Cobb and her drug-smuggling boyfriend. June had even been accused of narcotics use herself, in a tabloid story that greatly upset her. Was Jerrie telling me part of June’s biography but now owning it herself?

M: How can they accuse you of drug smuggling if it isn’t true?

 J: Oh, they’ll try, but they didn’t have anything on me, so I told ’em no.

M: What about the next time they tried?

 J: They tried again after the space hearings. They’re always trying. You just have to say no to ’em.

M: So how many times did they try to recruit you? Five times? Ten?

 J: Maybe eight or ten.

M: So why didn’t you sign up? Maybe it’s good work. What’s wrong with it?

 J: If you want to work with the Indigenous, the natives won’t trust you. The CIA isn’t very well liked in the jungle, and it’s best not to get mixed up with them.

At that point, I pivoted to describe how the visiting agent had come to my studio and told me that Jerrie’s documents were classified and needed to be in a vault. That made her laugh. She wasn’t put one bit off balance. Her gentle smile even indicated she was enjoying all this. I, on the other hand, wasn’t happy to have received a warning from a federal agent. I told her I thought this woman had no business butting into our project, and I had half a mind to call up the CIA and tell them a Defense Department official had told me I had classified documents.

 J: Now, you don’t want to get your friend in trouble, do you?

M: So what? If she’s nosing around our project, it doesn’t sound like she’s on our side. Federal agents aren’t supposed to be butting into people’s movies. What do I care if she gets in trouble?

I couldn’t help but notice how Jerrie seemed more worried about the agent’s career than about the implications for our project. I told her that with all the secret work she’d done at NASA, she certainly could have signed up for the CIA, but she wouldn’t be able to tell me if she had. Jerrie said, yes, it was true, that “the agency,” as she called it, would put agents under secrecy agreements, and she was very familiar with the parameters of those agreements, and with what could and could not be discussed.

M: From what the visiting agent told me, once an agent signs a secrecy agreement, they can’t divulge information, or they could be held accountable under the law. I don’t know if that was true in the old days or not.

 J: Yes, it was the same back then.

M: So that means if you ask an agent about their life and what they did, they can’t really tell you anything.

 J: Sure, they can. They can talk about a lot of things.

M: Well, they can’t tell you about what they really did, or that would be violating their secrecy agreement. I think if they tell you something classified, they could even be up for some sort of charge, like a jail sentence.

 J: Yes, and they should be. But they can talk about lots of things in their life, just not what they did on operations.

M: Really?

She nodded with great authority. Was she telling me the rules of our engagement?

M: So then you couldn’t tell me if you had worked for the agency.

 J: No. But I didn’t.

M: Well, I’m sure you’ll understand that considering what happened, I had to at least consider that you might have done some work for the agency. And as the head of the film, it was my responsibility to look into it for the protection of potential investors. So I did look into it. And what I did was google your name and the word CIA to see if anything came up. And what came up was this other lady, June Cobb, who is a CIA agent.

 J: Oh yes, June.

Jerrie couldn’t have been more relaxed and offhanded. Did she even seem happy?

M: So you know her?

 J: No, but I know of her.

M: So then you know she was from your hometown, Ponca City. She’s two or three years older than you. You never ran into her?

 J: No.

M: Well, she’s in your other hometown, too, Norman, which is also her other hometown. She’s supposed to be a blond woman, about your size. She was in the Civil Air Patrol at the same time you were back in Oklahoma. You didn’t see her there in the Civil Air Patrol?

 J: No.

M: Really? Because I wouldn’t think there’d be too many girl pilots with the name Cobb in that Civil Air Patrol at the local airports. She must have been pretty serious. She was a lieutenant.

 J: A lieutenant isn’t very high. Anybody can be a lieutenant.

M: Not high? She was an officer. She advanced herself.

 J: A lieutenant isn’t much. It’s the lowest officer.

M: She was a blond named Cobb, about your age. So you never bumped into her at the local airports. Did you know this other Cobb family?

 J: I’d heard of them.

M: What did you hear?

 J: She has a checkered past. I know that much. Everything she says is a lie.

M: What makes you say that?

 J: She’s done a lot of things…. I wouldn’t believe anything she says.

M: But if you don’t know her, why wouldn’t you give her a chance? If she’s an agent, maybe she can’t say everything. Who knows? Maybe she has to lie if she signed a secrecy agreement.

 J: She has a checkered past. She’s alive, you know. You should contact her.

M: She’s alive? For sure? How do you know?

 J: I think she is. Why don’t you contact her?

M: I plan to.

The fact is, I’d already looked up June Cobb during my three weeks of preparation. At the time, she had two addresses in New York City. One was on Park Avenue, and the other was near a film crew member’s apartment in Lower Manhattan.

The week before, my crew member, who was looped in to the whole situation, offered to walk over to June’s apartment to try to get a look at her. When she entered the building’s lobby, it appeared to be a halfway house for the destitute. Improvising, she told the attendant she was interested in an apartment for her mother. “Oh, by the way,” she added, “June Cobb, who lives here, is a friend of my mother’s. Is she here?” The attendant explained that June wasn’t there anymore and was frail. I hadn’t shared any of this with Jerrie.

Suddenly, Jerrie brought up this very crew member, whom she’d never met and had barely heard of, and told me to fire her, right on the heels of suggesting I should contact June Cobb. Were Jerrie’s desire to fire the crew member and the probing visit connected?

So far, nothing in Jerrie’s demeanor or answers was assuring me that she wasn’t June Cobb.

M: I’m sure you’ll understand that I have to ask you once and for all, because we’re doing this project together and I need to ask you very directly. Are you June Cobb, or have you ever used the name June Cobb for work for the government?

 J: No.

Jerrie wasn’t upset in the slightest by this question. I studied every inch of her face. She smiled warmly and was fully relaxed. Too relaxed, too happy. This question didn’t faze her, nor was she mad, or defensive, or acting like anything was out of the norm. It was as if this were an everyday conversation for her.

I pressed on.

M: You have never used the name June Cobb or Viola June Cobb for anything, ever?

 J: No.

She looked at me with great fondness. I’d just confronted her about having a double identity, which would mean she’d lied to me and sold me her life story under a false pretense, and she didn’t even flinch. She wasn’t stressed in the slightest. Nor did she seem to think I was crazy for bringing it up. I was even getting the impression she was enjoying herself. My questioning her identity didn’t diminish me in her eyes, nor did it seem to be impacting our friendship.

At this point, I had to recalibrate, because I’d expected her to walk off in a huff, and I still had several more chess moves before landing this conversation at Redbird.

M: So here’s the problem with that. This June Cobb, she’s turning up everywhere you are. I mean, it’s uncanny. I looked into her. Not only is she supposed to be blond and looks like you—she’s in your hometown of Ponca City, then your other hometown, Norman. Then this June Cobb is in New York City—when you’re in an apartment announcing the astronaut thing, she’s also in New York. When you’re in D.C. at that hearing, she’s there in D.C.—like, the exact same day! But get this…You know when you were in the Amazon jungle with those Indigenous people? That tribe you selected because it’s the most remote place on earth and the single most remote civilization that exists? She knows that same tribe—and she’s there, too, way back in the early days, and in those days, hardly any white people had ever been there! But she’s there, too, and she feels the same way that you do about that tribe and their coca leaf chewing. You didn’t see her? Or did the natives ever mention some other blond lady like you named Cobb, who was also from Oklahoma?

 J: No.

M: You know how you had jungle fever? She had that, too. And the Civil Air Patrol in Oklahoma, with her being right there in aviation, and you’re right there…How do you explain all that?

 J: I heard she impersonated me for a while.

She tossed that out with the casualness of a concept with which she was very familiar. I, on the other hand, needed a moment to let that sink in.

M: She impersonated you?

 J: Yes, I heard she did.

M: She impersonated you? Like…she used your name and pretended she was you for her spying?

 J: Yes.

M: That’s something you heard she did?

 J: Yes.

And there it is. She was conflating herself with June Cobb. I want to be very clear, while this is a reconstruction of this conversation, “She impersonated me for a while” is an exact phrasing.

M: Well, there’s our problem, Jerrie. That’s it. Our film does have a problem if this June Cobb lady impersonated you. That means she’s all tangled up with you in her spying. Jerrie, this June Cobb, she was a highly sought-after witness in the JFK assassination investigation, and the government never brought her forward. She’s some kind of deep CIA agent, and if she’s flying around impersonating you, then we’ve found out what’s wrong with the film.

 J: They can’t stop us. Let’s ignore it and move forward.

M: This June Cobb, let me tell you about her. There are thousands of pages on her in those government files, more than almost anybody else I saw in those files. The government didn’t bring her forward, and I think she knows something. All these men who looked into history, they ignored her. But she was right there when a lot of things happened, and she…well, there was some cat-leg-break thing, where, I don’t know, she broke some lady’s cat’s legs…. But you know what I think, Jerrie?

 J: What?

M: I think she knows who killed President Kennedy.

Jerrie was still looking at me with fondness.

 J: Yes. But no one would ever believe her.

She was still smiling.

M: I would believe her.

 J: She’s told so many lies….

M: I would believe her.

I wanted her to trust me, but I wasn’t sure why. Jerrie then spoke quite negatively about June, laying down heavy judgments that I’d never heard her make about anyone else. June was promiscuous. There were so many men, and she kept coming back to the lies. It was clear Jerrie very much disliked this June, whom she said she never met. When I countered that maybe June was just doing her job as an agent and had to tell stories to protect government secrets, and maybe June was patriotic in her own way, Jerrie dismissed it. I said I didn’t care how many men June slept with. Nobody really cares about that stuff anymore. I suggested Jerrie give June a chance.

And then I said it, and I could hardly believe I’d gotten there.

M: You know what I think she did, Jerrie?

 J: What?

M: I think she flew a plane into the Redbird Airport.

Jerrie leaned in as if she hadn’t heard me quite right. I was aware the people to my left were within touching distance, still eating silently. We were two hours into this by now.

M: Redbird! The Dallas airport, Redbird! On the day of the assassination, November 22, 1963. The day President Kennedy was killed!

Jerrie lurched back in her chair and exhaled. I’d never seen such an intense reaction. She looked like she’d been punched hard in the gut. All this time, she’d had no problem with this conversation. An agent visited me with strange warnings and tried to recruit me for the CIA? Not surprising. Her own memorabilia are classified? Ignore it and keep working. There’s another lady who looks like you with the same last name, turning up in every town you go to, who has the same illnesses and, despite astronomical odds, was in one of the most remote spots on the planet at the same time you were? Doesn’t flinch. All this is tangled up with the Kennedy assassination? No concern there. But Redbird? Pow!

Jerrie looked up at the ceiling and was beginning to cry. Her face was up, and she was fighting, fighting, and winning the fight to contain the tears welling in her lower lids. Many moments came and went, for this fight was not won easily. Only when she knew she could contain the tears did her head come down. She looked at me and rasped out:

 J: I was at the Redbird Airport.

I couldn’t believe this was happening, and I certainly had no plan for how to proceed from here. Was this a confession that she was June? Was she dropping the pretense that they were not one? Was she admitting some connection to the assassination? There wasn’t a lot known about this Redbird flight, except for the obscure story that a plane sat waiting to take off and revving its motor at an airport in the direction Oswald was headed. At least that was the speculation, that Oswald could have been trying to get to this flight. None of this did I mention.

M: You were at the Redbird Airport in Dallas on the day Kennedy was killed. It was you at the airport and not June Cobb?

 J: Yes.

She was regaining her composure and voice now.

M: What happened?

 J: I flew in a charter. I had some passengers. They were from Miami. I flew flights like that, and they hired me. They were from Life magazine and were going in to cover the event. They had cameras along and reporters. Jane Rieker [a Life reporter and friend of Jerrie’s] was there. I still have the flight log. I can give it to you. We flew in that morning from Miami and got there and sat in the plane out on the tarmac. We didn’t get out, though.

M: So you just stayed there on the tarmac and didn’t go in?

 J: Yes. We were waiting…and sat there. Just waiting. And then we heard…something…something had happened….

She trailed off, drifting back to that moment.

M: So you got there with the reporters, and you waited, but you didn’t go into Dallas…and then you heard something had happened? The assassination?

 J: Yes. And we were waiting…and I was worrying that the airspace would close down.

M: So you were worried about that?

 J: Something like this would shut down the airspace. And I wanted to take off before the airspace was shut down. We were out on the runway.

M: But you heard the news?

 J: Yes.

M: That Kennedy was killed?

 J: Yes.

M: How did you hear?

 J: The radio. Or someone came out and told us.

M: Do you remember exactly how you heard President Kennedy was shot?

 J: No, I’m not sure.

She seemed lost in thought, and I was having to jump in to keep her responding, but I was aware that she was about the only person of her generation who couldn’t remember exactly how they got the news about Kennedy. Despite all the oddities in her story, I challenged nothing. I didn’t want to halt the flow. She seemed fragile, and the moment was fragile as well.

M: So you got the news about Kennedy. Were you upset?

 J: Yes, but I was worried about the airspace.

It sure seemed like she was reliving some kind of anxiety about the exit, but displayed no upset at Kennedy’s death—it was about the exit. She was using vague language about the assassination and everything surrounding it. Phrases like “something happened” and “we heard more news.” She didn’t seem to want to say “assassination,” “shooting,” or “death.”

According to her story, she’d flown in a chartered planeload of Life magazine reporters from Miami to Dallas, but upon their arrival, they’d sat out on the tarmac while the biggest news story of the century happened. No one exited her airplane to cover it. They just sat on the runway and waited for something. As they waited, she was ready to take off, but she was worried that Air Force One, the presidential plane, would take precedence and the airspace would close down. She got the news of Kennedy’s death while she was still out on the runway, after which they continued waiting.

Then she got a second piece of news, upon which they took off. They barely made it out while the airspace was still open, she said.

I let her story stand without posing any of the obvious questions about its unusual nature or the things that didn’t make sense. This was her story. She’d offered it to me, and now I knew it.

All this time I’d been the one posing the questions, but as the conversation concluded and a calm born of fatigue set in, Jerrie did ask me one final thing.

 J: How did you know?

M: I didn’t. I guessed.

1.6 THE BEGINNING OF KNOWING

Much more went on between us in these three hours, and I will refer to this conversation again throughout this book. It was long, and at times felt confessional, and at other times, more protected. There were many currents and eddies to it, and I come back to my memory of this conversation frequently and always will.

For all my suspicions that Jerrie was the spy who used the name June Cobb, I still couldn’t fathom her involvement on the wrong side of the equation. The person I knew couldn’t have been more than a loyal agent forced to do an assignment, unwittingly placed in the wrong place at the wrong time. I hoped she would unburden herself to me in time. It was obvious that she needed to, and part of her wanted to. Her comment that June knew who killed Kennedy but “no one would ever believe her” was telling. If I could convince her that I would believe her, would she tell me what she knew?

As the morning wrapped up, we discussed the fate of the film. I told her I thought I’d put it on hold and suggested we start talking informally about her life and see where that went. She liked that idea.

As I stood to depart, she said she loved me. Her manner toward me had always been warm and affectionate, as from a senior woman to a younger one, but this phrasing was unusually direct. I’d spent two years interviewing her, and we’d never eaten together and still hadn’t. She’d never offered me a beverage in her home. Now I’d confronted her about being someone else, someone with links to the assassination, and our friendship was still standing. Was it my imagination, or was she even warmer to me now?

This was the beginning of me truly knowing Jerrie Cobb.

INTERLUDE 1

The Interregnum

After our Redbird discussion, I had no idea where my relationship with Jerrie would go. We were still under contract for several more months, after which I had the option to extend for another year. When I suggested we continue talking about her life informally, I had no illusion that it could still lead to a film. I no longer believed that the biography she presented to me was the whole truth, and that’s not a foundation for a movie—or for an ongoing relationship, for that matter.

Frankly, I was afraid of what I had stumbled onto. No books even hinted at the Jerrie and June overlap. I felt like I’d fallen into something that was new and fresh but also scary. I was aware of the reams of speculation about Castro, Cuba, and the Kennedy assassination, and I’d seen the 1991 Oliver Stone movie with all its many villains. Undoubtedly, a number of people fell down the JFK assassination rabbit hole never to return, and I wasn’t in a hurry to become one of them.

But this wasn’t just any rabbit hole. I knew this woman. She was a real, live person I’d been interviewing for two years. I’d already signed up to tell her story, and I’d been working on it for some time. I couldn’t help the fact that this was the story I’d found.

Or had I found it? Maybe it was being revealed to me for a reason. After all, Jerrie had willingly signed up for my inspection—and if it hadn’t been for the push I’d received from my there-and-gone Defense Department friend, we might have been casting the movie by now: Jerrie Cobb, aviation hero, nearly the first woman into space. Instead, I felt like the only person in the world who had been let in on a major and potentially explosive secret. A secret that had been hidden for decades. A secret that, for all I knew, someone might still want to protect.

If Jerrie was June, or if their identities were intertwined in intelligence work, then powerful intelligence services had been invested in protecting that illusion. Yet Jerrie being June, or at least having used that name for the CIA, seemed the most likely explanation. The only other theories I could muster were complicated ideas about her and someone else, perhaps a relative, having parallel lives that were tied up in spying—but I couldn’t fathom how such a cumbersome construct could work. None of this made sense. Why would Jerrie have agreed to do the film if she was hiding a secret of this magnitude?

Maybe some people would have backed away, when they saw how difficult this puzzle would be to solve or realized the potential enemies they might attract during the solving of it. Initially, while we were still under contract for the film, I felt the need to investigate as due diligence for my investors. But as the months wore on, my motivations shifted. It was no longer about the astronaut movie or the investors.

My new quest became twofold: (1) to understand this person I was profiling, who turned out to be a whole lot more fascinating than I originally thought, and (2) to see if I’d uncovered something new and important about the Kennedy assassination. Over time these two objectives, like dancers, swirled in tandem on the stage. One would take focus, then yield to the other, but both stayed with me. It didn’t matter if this story about double identities was one I could ever publicly tell. I needed to see it through. If I were to call myself a storyteller, how could I ever walk away from such a large and complicated tale?

So I found myself standing on a precipice, blindfolded, in a foreign land. In the spirit of making no sudden moves, I decided to resume my chatty emails with Jerrie as if nothing much had changed. I allowed our film contract to lapse and shifted to the idea I’d suggested in Newark—staying in touch informally, to see where it might lead.

I wouldn’t reengage with Jerrie face to face for two more years, after I understood a whole lot more about who it was I’d been dealing with all along. And to understand that, I’d have to remove my blindfold and familiarize myself with this new realm: the domain of the Central Intelligence Agency and the spooks in its employ.

TWO

June Cobb

2.1 FALSE IDENTITIES IN ESPIONAGE

Espionage is like a magic trick. Intelligence services count on fooling you into looking the wrong way at the wrong time, and that’s how they slip the illusion by you. In order to see the trick, you have to learn how intelligence services, and magicians, work. Since I had no experience with either, I had to learn about this world from the printed page.

That kind of research went against every atom of my being as a filmmaker, where you interview people to hear about their stories. I had to sit in libraries and crack the books to understand this world. Trickier yet, I was researching espionage from a bygone era, with technological and cultural differences that I had only experienced as a child.

The CIA’s file on June Cobb was so long, complex, and coded, I avoided jumping in for the longest time. Who wants to spend months of their life sifting and sorting through thousands of pages laced with pseudonyms and misdirections, trying to make sense of them? There was her 201 file, which is her CIA personality file, plus her lengthy CIA Office of Security file, her FBI files, the surveillance logs of her activities, the congressional hearings, her interview transcripts, her clippings, and then oodles of cables and communications using her code names, all of which reside in the massive President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection.

It didn’t help that I had a phobia about libraries and had graduated from college without ever stepping into one. The records collection containing June’s file was held at the mother of all libraries, the National Archives in College Park, Maryland. Eventually my curiosity got the best of me, and I summoned my inner John Wayne, and over a dozen or more visits, I copied every single file on June Cobb, her code names, and her associates.

I then sorted my mountain of Cobb documents by date, either of the document or of the events discussed within, and put them in binders. The idea was to create a booklike chronology of everything June had done and every place she’d been, in a sequence that would tell the story of her life. First and foremost, I wanted to determine if the spy using the name June Cobb was Jerrie. But I also wanted to learn more about the operations June was conducting, and how the CIA handled false identities in general. If Jerrie was June, or if one of them was borrowing a persona, how would that have worked?

We’ve all seen spies in movies don false identities, but the specifics of CIA tradecraft are rarely discussed. The burning question now before me was: How does a spy become a different person in actual practice? I quickly realized there’s no one-stop shopping for this information, since the agency isn’t in the habit of publishing its methodology. I had to slowly piece it together from a hodgepodge of fictional representations, other government programs, clues laced within files, and good old-fashioned logical deductions.

A spy who assumes a new identity has only two possibilities: they can borrow the identity of another person living or dead, or they can create a new one from whole cloth. It’s also possible to use both tactics in different situations. An agent might use an alias to check into a hotel for a single night, or craft a persona to live abroad for a decade. Those situations would seem to require different false identity preparations, or backstops, as they’re called in spy lingo.

Even though the agency scrupulously avoids putting the topic to paper, I found a comprehensive review of the CIA’s methodology that discussed identity displacements rather directly. Conducted by General James Doolittle in 1954, his report bemoaned the trouble the agency was having recruiting the best and brightest because many top students were “unwilling to accept the implications of a lifetime of anonymity, or life under a pseudonym.”

“A lifetime of anonymity” and “life under a pseudonym” certainly sound like a permanent construction. But the general didn’t recommend relaxing the requirement, because it was “necessary for maximum security and success of covert operations.” Instead, he recommended making a more persuasive pitch to young recruits.

This document, more than any other that I’ve encountered, argues that some Cold War–era recruits had to peel off their birth names to assume a false identity that they’d be masquerading in for life. That is a shocking revelation, that agents who are fellow Americans could be living in our midst with fabricated backstories. But that notion is supported by procedures adopted by the JFK Assassination Review Board, which allowed the CIA to redact an agent’s name in perpetuity if that person had “retired under cover.” These two documents, taken together, literally spell out the vintage agency’s modus operandi of placing at least some covert employees permanently into false identity constructions.

Of course, the government creates false personas in other situations as well, most notably in the witness protection program, known as WITSEC. Fortunately, WITSEC’s creator, Gerald Shur, co-wrote a book called WITSEC: Inside the Federal Witness Protection Program that, at least broadly, explains the process. Shur initially consulted with the CIA on how to structure the program, but he ultimately decided that the agency’s false identities were far more comprehensive than what was needed for witness protection. “I wasn’t going to send a witness to penetrate a foreign nation,” he wrote, “and I didn’t need to give anyone a deep cover. What I needed was just enough new documentation for someone to get a fresh start in a new community.”

When someone enters the witness protection program, operated by the U.S. Marshals Service, they are issued a new name that has similarities to their old one because maintaining initials or a sound-alike quality fosters a sense of continuity. The fresh moniker is then printed on a Social Security card and a birth certificate, and with those two irrefutable government documents, illusion becomes reality. Spouses and children are similarly provided with identities, with the kids receiving transcripts from schools they didn’t attend. Those transcripts are our first hint that outside institutions are enlisted to bolster the deception. WITSEC has successfully protected over nineteen thousand people, so apparently a phone call to a school won’t unravel the illusion.

Another realm where false identities are commonplace is law enforcement. Investigators have been known to live under cover for years while infiltrating a criminal ring. When the FBI’s undercover tactics came under scrutiny in 1983, a Senate subcommittee delved into the ethical boundaries of undercover practices. The resulting report included a short passage that caught my eye because it shed light on one of my most pressing questions—why two biographies would share a set of astonishing similarities. From the section titled “The Assumed Identity”:

A fictitious background and history for the new character of the undercover investigator should be prepared. The investigator’s background story should seldom, if ever, be wholly fictitious. The undercover investigator should assume an identity in keeping with his personality traits and in keeping with his own background and characteristics.

I challenge you to ponder a hypothetical. If you were sending a spy to penetrate an enemy palace, what would you provide her with? False ID documents with bogus addresses? Phony families living at those addresses? Planted news stories to bolster a faked biography? Doctored census records? Yearbook photos from schools she didn’t attend? Where would you draw the line in creating false history, or would you be willing to authorize all of the above to protect this woman’s life? I surprised myself by admitting that I would supply the agent with the works, even if it wound up putting into the historical record a false trail for researchers to encounter—which clearly, they could.

It’s a matter not just of the agent’s safety but also of national security. If the spy were exposed out in the field, couldn’t the enemy blackmail her to flip sides by threatening harm to her loved ones? Is that why the creation of a foundational new identity was so important that Doolittle recommended the requirement stay in place? I was starting to comprehend the sacrifices these agents and their families made, and why the illusion might have to extend even into a spy’s retirement, especially if they’d inflicted damage on the enemy.

Now let’s consider June Cobb. Thousands of pages at the National Archives spell out how she betrayed Fidel Castro, who held power until 2008, after which his brother, Raúl, ruled until 2021. What was to stop Cuba from seeking retribution against June, even in her senior years? The possibility of violence or intimidation against agents is a reason the CIA argued to President Trump in 2018 and President Biden in 2022 that some JFK Assassination Records still needed to remain secret. As we’ll learn in Chapter 7, Castro and his government had every reason to harbor animus toward June Cobb. Shouldn’t she have gotten at least as much protection as a mob-style witness? If ever a spy needed a lifetime of backstopping, June Cobb looked like she would be the one.

And what about her CIA file? How much of that should be trusted? If an enemy mole were to get a look at the paperwork containing her family’s names and addresses, couldn’t a foreign power threaten to inflict deadly consequences on them to flip her allegiances in the field? One remedy against this possibility would be to run a false name and backstory throughout the paperwork, especially for a spy who was on a particularly dangerous assignment, like double-crossing Fidel Castro. June Cobb’s division chief, James Angleton, was famously obsessed with his belief that there was a mole in the highest reaches of the agency.

These considerations and more point to the possibility that June Cobb’s file is itself a highly protected operation that scrupulously avoided committing to paper who she really was and what exactly she was doing. Angleton colorfully referred to these intelligence puzzles as a “wilderness of mirrors.” Some people think he was describing a wilderness-like landscape where it’s impossible to get one’s bearings. But light reflects off of mirrors in accordance with the laws of physics, just as a lie takes on the negative imprint of that which it conceals.

I was starting to get an idea of the landscape onto which I’d just arrived.

2.2 THE CIA’S INVESTIGATION INTO JUNE AND JERRIE

Jerrie suggested I get in contact with June, but that turned out to be easier said than done. I left several voicemails explaining that I was interested in an interview, but June didn’t respond. She didn’t even put her voice on her outgoing message, and after my first few tries, the answering machine at the Park Avenue apartment that I knew she still maintained was disconnected. Considering that June had spoken to several other authors, I found it curious I was getting the cold shoulder. It wasn’t lost on me that if an identity illusion was in play and I was on to it, then June would have been told to avoid me at all costs.

I wasn’t the first person to be interested in the intersection between June and Jerrie Cobb. Deep within June’s CIA file, I found a series of memos in which the agency initiated an investigation into the relationship between June and Jerrie. That’s an unusual request, to say the least. Why couldn’t they just ask June if she had any connection to Jerrie? That never happened. Instead, in the summer of 1960, not long after June’s recruitment, her case officer, Jean Pierson, launched an inquiry into the two women.

Keep in mind that after studying June’s file for a few hours, and knowing Jerrie’s biography, I came across the Astonishing List of Similarities that caused me to confront Jerrie about being June. Here’s a rundown of the CIA’s investigation into the same matter.

Jerrie’s Press Triggers the Investigation

It was the week of August 19, 1960, when Life magazine splashed Jerrie’s face across a four-page spread announcing she was fit as a fiddle and ready for space. A media barrage followed, with papers on every continent hyping that Jerrie had passed the astronaut tests with flying colors. Her space splash was still going strong when June’s case officer sent a memo requesting the security office conduct a “field check” to determine the “relationship, if any,” between June and Jerrie Cobb. The responsibility was passed to the CIA’s Los Angeles field office—an interesting choice since June and Jerrie were both from Oklahoma. And that wasn’t the only unusual decision. Los Angeles sent a memo restating instructions they received in a recent phone call:

It was suggested to you that one possible method of ascertaining the degree of relationship between the two girls might be by utilizing the services of the credit bureau. It was further suggested you might be able to have a credit check run in the name of the girls’ fathers rather than to conduct the inquiry in the name of said girls. At any rate, you were advised that both families involved should not be alerted to your inquiries…. You were requested to advise Headquarters if this assignment could not be completed without dispatching an agent to Ponca City, Oklahoma.

Headquarters then provided Los Angeles with the fathers’ names and addresses, essentially answering the central question before the inquiry began. A few days later, Los Angeles wrapped up the investigation, which, as instructed, consisted of a single telephone call to the Ponca City Retail Merchants Association. There a woman named Hazel Long confirmed that both fathers had businesses or residential listings in Ponca City. Hazel added her personal belief that the two fathers had no relationship to each other. The case was then closed, as if a credit check on two men were an effective way to determine a relationship between two women.

Attached to the CIA’s internal investigation was a news clipping from Jerrie’s recent press coverage. Beneath her photo, someone had made the handwritten notation “NOT Ident w/ Subj.” meaning “Not Identical with Subject.” It’s a phrase from government jargon commonly used to differentiate two people. Apparently, the purpose of this investigation was to prove they weren’t the same person.

Jean Pierson, the case officer who had ordered the investigation, had already met June Cobb and sat in on her initial CIA security interviews. Couldn’t she just see that they weren’t the same person? Why weren’t both women’s photos included for a comparison? Why were investigators told to avoid visiting Oklahoma? Why make inquiries into the two fathers instead of the two women? And why didn’t anyone mention the astonishing similarities that I had seen almost instantly?

FIGURE 2A. A clipping from Jerrie’s space press, from June Cobb’s CIA file.

Click here to view as text.

The government certainly was sitting on a mountain of evidence from which it could have run a proper inquiry. A passport check would have shown the women’s travels to the same isolated regions. A call to the Civil Air Patrol would have shed light on their similar histories in aviation. Surely, the records of the State Department’s intervention, when Jerrie was jailed for spying in Ecuador, would have been relevant. You would think the agency would also have looked into why Jerrie was constantly flying into June’s operational zones. But no, the CIA decided to place a phone call to Hazel Long.

It occurred to me that this slim investigation might itself be an example of a backstop. If so, the June Cobb file was showing signs of falsification. But as I was learning, no CIA file is designed to be a full representation of the truth. The Cobb file, like all CIA constructs, was carefully curated to compartmentalize the many facets of the secret agent’s operations.

2.3 JUNE COBB’S CODED CIA FILE

The CIA’s use of false identities is complicated, and that is by design. Career agents—or officers, as they’re called today—will have one set of aliases for use out in the field and another set of code names and pen names for use within the files. The key tactic is compartmentalization. By fragmenting the narrative into many little pieces, the agency ensures that if one compartment is compromised, it won’t ruin the agent’s career or other active operations. All CIA files use this tactic of compartmentalization, effectively splitting one person into what appears to be a crowd.

This is especially important when you need to keep a record of everything that’s happened, but you also need to be able to obscure that record from all except those with the knowledge of how its pieces interconnect. If you know just one code or pen name but not the others, you come away with a profoundly incomplete and misleading picture of a person’s overall activity. This is why “impersonating for a while” and then ditching that persona is so effective. It separates an agent from whatever deeds were done during the impersonation.

How the CIA Splits a Person Within Their File

During the Cold War era, the agency used four major categories of false names and code names for CIA agents.

CRYPTONYMS. A cryptonym is a code name used within CIA paperwork to refer to a person, project, country, or governmental department—basically, to any proper noun. A person can have more than one cryptonym. The first two letters of a cryptonym are a code for the country or organization to which the term pertains. Cryptonyms are usually capitalized. Examples: LIMOTOR, AMLASH, KUBARK (the CIA’s code name for itself).

PSEUDONYMS. A pseudonym is a false name given to an agent that often sounds pompous and that exists only in CIA paperwork. It can be used when an agent authors a memo or when an agent’s activities are spoken about in a cable or dispatch. Agents may have numerous pseudonyms. Examples: Lee R. Mylechraine, Phineas F. Slinkard.

TRUE NAMES. A name will sometimes be categorized as a “true name,” and for some agents, it may be their birth name. I will go only so far as to agree that a “true name” is the oldest root name for an agent that the CIA is willing to reveal in its paperwork.

ALIASES. An alias, or operational alias, is a false name used by an agent while undercover out in the field. A single spy might use hundreds of aliases over their career. They range from temporary-use aliases to long-standing false personas cultivated over decades. Aliases aren’t routinely committed to paper within the agent’s file. When an agent uses a series of aliases, some may have matching initials or other signifiers and sound-alikes. Examples: Harry Hermsdorf = Henry Hubner = Harry Huebner.

Now let’s review how June Cobb’s file breaks her persona out into these same four compartments.

FIGURE 2B. Sometimes an agent’s true name, aliases, cryptonyms, and pseudonyms are spelled out, as in this document about June Cobb. In other cases, they must be deduced through a series of documents.

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June’s Cryptonyms = AMUPAS and LICOOKY or LICOOKIE

June Cobb has two confirmed cryptonyms, AMUPAS and LICOOKY, which is also sometimes spelled LICOOKIE. Remember, the first two letters of a cryptonym are a code signifying a country or organization. The AM in AMUPAS stands for Cuba, and the LI in LICOOKY means Mexico, June’s two primary operational regions.

During the Cold War era, the second half of a cryptonym was often a word that describes something about the person or project. For example, President Kennedy’s crypt was GPIDEAL: GP for the administration, and IDEAL as a word to describe him. Guatemalan ex-president Juan José Arévalo, a June Cobb spy target, was dubbed ESLARD—ES for Guatemala, and yes, he was overweight. Fidel Castro’s crypt was AMTHUG—AM for Cuba, and it’s pretty clear how the CIA felt about him.

June Cobb’s descriptive word for her work in Cuba was UPAS. Upas is a poison extracted from an Asian tree sap that, when applied to the tip of an arrow, kills the target. Her descriptive word in Mexico was COOKIE, a vintage slang word for an attractive woman. If June’s two cryptonyms are to be believed, she was considered to be both attractive and deadly.

June’s Pseudonym = Joyce H. Pineinch

June Cobb has only one confirmed pseudonym, Joyce H. Pineinch. This pseudonym was used almost exclusively for her financial records, administrative paperwork, and secrecy agreements.

June’s True Name = Viola June Cobb

Viola June Cobb is listed as June’s “true name,” clearly implying that this was her birth name. However, I discovered an anomaly with her income tax and Social Security information that suggests she was being taxed as two different people.

By the time June entered the CIA in 1960, she’d already worked at numerous jobs that would have necessitated her having a Social Security number, a number that is normally issued to an American only once in a lifetime. During June’s first two years with the agency, we know she paid tax on her CIA salary, although she was sometimes tardy, and had Social Security information, which was described in a December 1961 dispatch.

Now, fast-forward to 1963, when, at age thirty-five, the CIA suddenly issued June another Social Security number, and this one was ordered through the CIA Office of Security, not Social Security (Figure 2C).

Why did June need a new Social Security number, and under what name was she paying her taxes before? These documents, taken together, suggest a duality for “Viola June Cobb” and throw into question that Viola June Cobb was really her birth name.

FIGURE 2C. The CIA Office of Security was asked to provide a Social Security number for Viola June Cobb on August 5, 1963, after she had been working for the agency for three years.

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June’s Aliases = Annabelle Wilson, June Sharp, Clarinda Sharp, June and Joan Corwin

When she met with her male case officer, June used the name “Annabelle Wilson,” or “Anna” for short. When she received mail from a contact in New York City, he addressed the envelope to her as “Clarinda Sharp.” When she spoke on her sterile hotline to headquarters, she phoned in as “Joan” or “June Corwin.” “June Cobb Sharp” was a deceptive derivative the agency used for her in the 1970s, where her mother’s maiden name was tacked on after her father’s surname. Since the agency didn’t keep a directory of an agent’s aliases, these are just the few that are mentioned within her file.

June Loans Out Her Name

As if this picture weren’t complicated enough, June admitted during a CIA security interview in June 1960 that she’d loaned out her identity to another woman to travel to Cuba on at least two occasions. By giving this other woman her birth certificate as proof, June teed up her double to fly from Miami to Cuba in October 1959 and again in January or February 1960. “I trust her with my secrets,” June said of her doppelgänger.

Between her five proven aliases, her two known cryptonyms, her official pseudonym, her so-called true name, and her earliest taxpaying name, we now have ten personas for June Cobb; plus a totally different woman has used her identity. Which brings me back to my rudimentary question: Is the woman I know as Jerrie Cobb referred to as “June Cobb” in the CIA’s file?

After I collected every scrap of paper on June, I circled back to Jerrie and compiled a matching chronological binder spanning her life story, too. With this massive amount of data in hand, I began plotting their whereabouts on a timeline, with the goal of settling the double identity question once and for all. One physical body can’t be in two places at once. The timeline wound up being one of the most important tools in understanding their relationship.

2.4 THE JUNE-JERRIE TIMELINE

I designed a split-screen timeline, running information about Jerrie on one side and June on the other. It covered their entire lives, but I homed in on 1959–64, which I started to think of as their operational years. These were the peak years for June’s spying, and when Jerrie burst onto the scene as an astronaut hopeful. To capture every detail for this five-year period, I shifted the timeline into high resolution, with a line of data for every single day.

For most people, it would be difficult to pinpoint exactly where they were on any given day, but thanks to the government paperwork on June and the news clippings on Jerrie, I was able to place them with a degree of certainty on a surprisingly large number of days. I developed a system of anchor points and patterned boxes that marked their locations on exact dates.

Synchronized Swimming and Checkerboarding

The first thing the timeline revealed was that both women traveled through the same circuit of cities and kept circulating through those regions in perpetual motion. I needed only a few shades and patterns for the cities they traveled through most—diagonal stripes for Manhattan, verticals for Florida (usually Miami), polka dots for D.C., and gray for Cuba. Their movements even had a certain rhythm to them.

In two random lives with no relationship to each other, why would this unusual travel pattern repeat? I dubbed these coordinated movements “synchronized swimming.” While their travels weren’t identical, they were like two swimmers in a Busby Berkeley number, moving around the same swimming pool with interrelated choreography.

The other pattern I called “checkerboarding.” In this phenomenon, June would be busy on her side of the timeline, while I could find no data for Jerrie; then June would go silent, and Jerrie would pop up on her side of the graph. Like the black-and-white boxes on a checkerboard, they alternated. Sometimes one would even have a thin excuse, like an illness, while her side of the timeline went quiet.

On the next page are a few examples of what these patterns look like on the June-Jerrie timeline.

Right away, you see the checkerboard pattern in Figure 2D, where Jerrie is the first to be accounted for, as illustrated by the patterned bar in late April and most of May 1960. When Jerrie’s whereabouts become unknown on May 24, June surfaces on her side of the timeline and she is active for the next few weeks. This is an excellent example of checkerboarding, and the switchover is so crisp, you can peg it to the day.

FIGURE 2D. Checkerboarding example for May–June 1960.

The text entry beside the bar—for example, “J13” beside May 13—is an anchor point, meaning I have solid data for Jerrie’s location on that exact day. The corresponding line of text explains where Jerrie was and where the information was sourced. A copy of the sourced information was then chronologically filed in my Jerrie or June binders for easy review.

Since the material I was evaluating could be deceptive, I weighted sources of information according to how strong they were, and I generated anchor points only when the information and sourcing provided strong proof of whereabouts. For example, for J13, the entry for May 13 indicates that Jerrie signed a landing ticket at an airport in Zanzibar on that day, and that the original document is held at the Schlesinger Library. Jerrie also discussed in her autobiography that she flew to Africa during this period, but I wouldn’t have given it an anchor point if the only evidence was Jerrie’s version in her book. Anchor points require backup materials, like newspaper clippings, travel documents, and dated photographs. In the case of her Africa trip, I have dated photographs and news coverage as well as an Ancestry.com travel manifest for her return flight. Meanwhile, all the time Jerrie was in Africa, June Cobb was silent.

On June’s side, I similarly required more proof than just a generic say-so. June’s CIA file gives the impression she was in Cuba working for Castro in May 1960, and June even testified to Congress that she was “employed in Havana” in 1959 and most of 1960, but that wasn’t enough for an anchor. The last corroborative data I had for June was an FBI source who said he telephoned June in Havana on April 18, after which she went dark. When Jerrie was active in late April and May, there was no sign the CIA communicated with June. On May 24, after Jerrie disappeared from view, June popped back up in Cuba with a series of documented contacts with her CIA handlers and a travel manifest for her return flight, so those dates got anchor points, and so on.

While Jerrie was in Africa, June had no solid activity, and while June was in Cuba, Jerrie had no provable conflicts. This is a classic example of the checkerboarding I was seeing throughout the timeline. One is absent while the other is active, and then on a dime, the dynamic reverses.

Looking at the timeline for March and April 1961 in Figure 2E, we see right away that June and Jerrie were both swimming around in the same geographical regions, as they very often did. The predominance of horizontal and diagonal stripes means both women were cycling through Miami and New York City. June also took a pit stop in Washington to debrief with her CIA handlers in the middle of the timeline.

This section was typical of how the timeline looked, stretching over years. It was provocative but not conclusive in itself. Still, it was an interesting exercise to pick random people and see how quickly you could exclude them from being June or Jerrie based on publicly available information. My mother, for example, gave birth to me in Pennsylvania on October 4, 1960, and with just that one piece of data, I could rule her out from being either of them. The timeline failed to conclusively rule June and Jerrie in as one person, but it also failed to do what it swiftly should have done, which was rule them out.

FIGURE 2E. Synchronized swimming and checkerboarding for March–April 1961.

The timeline indicated an interrelatedness between the women but also raised more questions. How could one person constantly travel through the same cities in two different identities without being recognized? Let’s remember, John Newman sat across the table from a woman identifying herself as June Cobb, but he couldn’t be sure if she was Jerrie Cobb or not. As it turns out, the qualities that make a person identifiable are quite malleable, and the CIA has an entire division devoted to the art of manipulating a person’s signature characteristics.

2.5 THE ELEMENT OF DISGUISE

As a filmmaker, I was well versed in the transformation of an actor into a character for a movie, but I wanted to learn more about how this was accomplished in the world of espionage. In an effort to recruit top talent, the agency now allows retired officers like Jonna Mendez, a former chief of disguise, to hit the publicity circuit and demonstrate a few tricks of the trade. Mendez plied her craft in a fascinating video produced by Wired magazine that leaves no doubt that a spy can easily travel the same circuit of cities in two identities and go undetected.

If you were working in Europe and you were meeting with a clandestine source at a café, your biggest concern might be that your next-door neighbor is going to wander into that café at that moment and say “Hi Bill!” when you weren’t Bill. And that kind of casual stumbling upon people was an issue, and so you would wear what we’d call “light disguise.”…The other extreme is “advanced disguise,” that you would use for up-close and personal for an extended period of time, where the person you were talking to would have no idea that you were not in true face.

—Jonna Mendez

According to Mendez, changes to a spy’s appearance are accomplished in transparent layers. Small shifts in body language and wardrobe eventually craft the illusion that one person has disappeared and been replaced by another. Someone can even swap personas in a crowd in a matter of seconds. Gumline plumpers, voice changers, and dental appliances work seamlessly with wigs and beards for advanced deceptions. In the world of espionage, shape-shifting identities are a daily occurrence, and many of the methods Mendez illustrated in her presentation were stock-in-trade techniques from the June Cobb era.

But Jerrie spelled out for me in Newark that June Cobb specifically deployed the tactic of impersonation. So was “impersonation” a known strategy that the CIA used?

Deep within a profile piece for The Wall Street Journal, Mendez described how in the Soviet Union she and her team had created “twins” of their agents in order to fool the KGB into “following the wrong person.” By sending out a double to lure the opposition, she effectively unshackled the real McCoy from scrutiny. That’s a very interesting concept, indeed—swapping out a highly sought-after identity with a placeholder to take heat off the original.

When Mendez discusses these illusions, she frames the deception in terms of a short-term goal, like losing a surveillance team or escaping an embassy. I was interested in the crafting of disguises for spies stationed overseas for years in false personas and in how they entered into retirements undercover. I signed up for an online seminar so I could ask Mendez how long-term disguises were designed. She neatly sidestepped my premise, leaving me to conclude that years-long undercover service was a topic the agency would rather she avoid.

June Cobb and Her Twin Sister

I kept returning to Dave Phillips’s comment that June “flew an airplane” and had a “twin sister involved in aviation.” Phillips was actively involved in the CIA’s overthrow of President Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, and he participated in the agency’s campaign to unseat Castro in 1960 and ’61. He was also a legendary master of disguise, said to have been running more than one hundred identities of his own.

In August 1978, when Phillips made the “twin sister” comment to congressional investigators, they were still trying to bring June forward for an interview, with the looming possibility that they might get a look at her. I’ve long wondered if Phillips tossed out the “twin sister” idea because he feared Cobb was on the brink of exposure.

Phillips could only have meant Jerrie when he said June Cobb had an aviating twin. Jerrie was the most recognizable female pilot of her era, and she frequently traveled down to Mexico City, where Phillips was stationed. A collage of Jerrie’s face from four different angles even ran in a prominent Mexican paper at a time when it was Phillips’s job to influence those papers for the station’s propaganda division.

This brings me back to the element of disguise. Phillips’s “twin sister” comment tantalizes us with the idea that Jerrie and June might look identical. That’s why it’s curious that several photos of June were published during her CIA tenure, and those images of June look nothing like Jerrie.

2.6 THE EXISTENCE OF TWO PEOPLE

Jerrie Cobb’s Photographic Record

From working together on our film, I knew that thousands of photos of Jerrie had been taken over her lifetime, hundreds of which I had on hand at my office. On the whole, these photos support her stated biography: that she grew up in Oklahoma, was a record-setting pilot, passed the astronaut tests, and flew charity missions in the Amazon jungle.

This exhaustive collection proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the woman I knew spent much of her life in South America, had clearances to enter top-secret facilities, socialized with Latin American leaders, and was invited to the Oval Office. She’d been photographed in all the regions that June would have visited, and circulated with the class of political leaders that June would have known.

FIGURE 2F. (1) Childhood portrait. (2) Outside Norman, Oklahoma, home. (3) Sheppard Field, Texas, during World War II. (4) Equestrian, with her horse. (5) In air race, Ponca City, 1952. (6) In South America for Fleetways, 1954. (7) Piloting a T-7 warplane, 1954. (8) Playing softball for Sooner Queens, ca. 1950. (9) Displaying her machete and gun needed for jungle flying, 1955.

FIGURE 2F. (10) AC spark plug advertisement, 1958. (11) Preparing for world record flights, 1957. (12) Tyndall World Wide Weapons Meet, 1959. (13) At New York City press conference for astronautics announcement, 1960. (14) Scuba diving practice, 1960. (15) Tilt table test at Lovelace Clinic, 1960. (16) Aero Commander PR photo, 1962. (17) Portrait for Life, 1963.

FIGURE 2F. (18) 1964 FAA women’s advisory meeting with Jean Pearson (left), Mercury 13 pilot Bea Steadman (center), and Jerrie (right). (19) Quito, Ecuador, travel visa, 1964. (20) Refueling in the Amazon jungle, ca. 1970. (21) Receiving Harmon Trophy from President Nixon, 1974. (22) Rafting in the Amazon, 1970s. (23) With a wall map, 1980s. (24) At the Udvar-Hazy Space Shuttle exhibit, 2014. (25) During interview with the author, 2010.

In the world of spying, where false names are pulled on and off like dirty sweat socks, it matters who’s proven to be in proximity to the action. Jerrie’s face was in June’s operational zones at all the right times. So was this other woman, named June Cobb, there, too? And if so, what provable traces did she leave, other than her CIA file, which already deployed ten different names for this shape-shifting spy?

June Cobb’s Photographic Record

It took ten years and a lot of digging, but I finally excavated a small collection of images of the woman named June Cobb, twenty-some photos in all. Many are fuzzy or taken from a distance, and all were taken between 1944 and 1977. The most widely distributed ones were, counterintuitively, published during her CIA tenure and were released with the agency’s knowledge.

Only three of the photos peg her to places where June should have been, and all three are of such poor quality or were taken at such a sharp angle that they do little to establish who was in the picture. Still, the collection as a whole does prove one thing: there was a woman named June Cobb, whose photo was published with articles about CIA agent June Cobb, and who in those photos does not look like Jerrie.

The June Cobb of New York City

After retiring from the agency, June’s file says she resettled to New York City, and sure enough, a woman named June Cobb did live out her retirement years in Manhattan. My inner Sherlock Holmes was very interested in this woman. Who was she? How long had she lived there? And did she look anything like the photos of June published during her CIA career?

According to the Manhattan telephone directory, June moved to New York City in 1968 and lived there until I first tried to contact her in early 2011. For most of that time, she maintained a one-bedroom apartment on Park Avenue, living a quiet and secluded urban life. Gone was her habit of making an international ruckus, traveling the world, and influencing its leaders. It would be fair to say that she left very few traces, but thanks to the internet, I unearthed a blog that cited her as a member of a commune-style think tank of avant-garde intellectuals in the 1970s called Lindisfarne.

FIGURE 2G. (1) Senior high school photo. (2) Announcing job at Tropics Institute, 1954. (3) Announcing summer school in Mexico City, 1947. (4) In South America with Indigenous people, early 1950s. (5) Battling leishmaniasis, 1951. (6) Published with “June Cobb: She’s a Soldier of Fortune,” Parade, 1962. (7) Interviewing the president of Mexico, 1948. (8) Dust jacket photo from The Shark and the Sardines, 1962. (9) Published when June released her congressional testimony, 1966. (10) In New York City, 1970s.

The Lindisfarne intellectuals were interested in the relationship between spirituality and mathematics, and they were loosely affiliated with the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan. June was also involved at St. John’s, where she ran a tiny library on Sacred Geometry that was hidden behind a secret door in the cathedral’s walls. With those tantalizing leads in hand, I sought out any and all of June’s acquaintances, and I spoke to more than a dozen friends and family members who knew her, but only a few would go on the record.

These conversations were fascinating, and I was able to obtain a vivid portrait of June, both photographically and as a person. The two photos that the Lindisfarne leadership shared with me revealed her to be a pleasant-looking middle-aged woman who matched the images published during her CIA tenure. I then confirmed with people who visited her at the Sacred Geometry library that this was also the woman they knew. The June Cobb of New York does not look like Jerrie.

She also doesn’t sound much like the spy described in her CIA file. The woman about whom June’s friends shared memories was a mild-mannered soul who rarely spoke of Cuba or her work for the CIA. They described her as gentle, kind, and intellectually curious. None believed her to be duplicitous, and no one could imagine her to be capable of nefarious activities. Certainly not the nefarious activities I will outline later in this volume. They said June was a rather passive woman, but smart. The June Cobb of New York was a beta, not an alpha, and a follower who was easily led by strong men. “I can’t conceive of June betraying friends” is a direct quote from one who knew her well.

The New York City June had no Oklahoma accent and no dust from Ponca City on her shoes. She was urbane and metropolitan, passionately left-wing and an admitted communist. Her friends’ characterizations of her politics were particularly illuminating. While much of her CIA file described her similarly, a handful of documents that I’d culled from her file revealed the truth—that the spy using the name June Cobb was a hardened cold warrior who believed that communism was the “deadly enemy of free men” and whose left-wing views were nothing but a facade strategized with her case officer to penetrate enemy strongholds.

Perhaps the most telling observation about the New York City June was this. No one ever described her as a blond. Furthermore, not a single photo in my collection registered her as a blond. She was always a brunette. When I read her description from her CIA file to one of her New York City friends, his exact words were, “That sounds like a different woman.” The June Cobb of New York was of average build with brown hair in a bob, and while she was pleasant looking, no one ever raved about her beauty. The June Cobb of the CIA was described as a tall, slender, attractive blond in every instance.

One Picture Above the Rest

The best snapshot of June, and the one with an impeccable pedigree, is the photo she herself mailed to John Newman while he was interviewing her for his book. On the back, the inscription says, “1964 Mexico City,” in handwriting I’ve come to recognize as June’s from her file. Unlike all the other photos, this one was taken from the front; she is clearly identifiable, and it’s vouched for by June herself. The portrait matches the woman who retired to New York City and appears to match the photos published during her CIA heyday.

FIGURE 2H. The photo of herself that June mailed to John Newman. It says “1964 Mexico City” on the back.

Considering the Evidence

The photographic evidence was clear. June wasn’t Jerrie, and there were pictures out there that would prove it. Still, none of this erased their lifelong synchronicity: the two women growing up in the same places, traveling to obscure destinations seemingly in tandem, Jerrie’s knowing way too much about June, both being in top-secret programs, and Jerrie’s bizarre remark that June impersonated her.

I now also had the timeline, showing that they checkerboarded when their whereabouts were plotted on a graph. Plus, the June of the CIA was a blond who perfectly matched Jerrie’s description but didn’t match her own photos. Furthermore, June Cobb had paid federal income tax under one Social Security arrangement before needing a new number that was issued by the CIA’s Office of Security.

Backstops are created so the investigator will bounce off them. I wasn’t ready to bounce just yet.

2.7 SEEKING EVIDENCE THAT COULD BE TRUSTED

As I waded deeper into this wilderness of mirrors, the question arose: What kind of evidence could truly be trusted? Once you come to grips with the fact that you might be facing a fully backstopped intelligence illusion, how could you ever tell who it was that conducted spy operations fifty years ago? Untangling the truth seemed an impossible task, and reasonable doubt would surely linger no matter which conclusion I came to. Was it even possible to solve this?

Perhaps it was the idealist in me, but I couldn’t help but summon my belief in the power of truth. It was a belief that I didn’t even know I had, but now I was fully committed to the concept. At my core, I believe that truth has a certain inalienable ring to it, and that the ring of truth is discernible. Real people moved through space and took certain actions, facts that could never be erased no matter how much obfuscation an intelligence agency threw at it. The key question before me was: Who was the woman who conducted the operations in the CIA file that are attributed to “June Cobb”?

After much thought, I decided one piece of evidence was deeply worthy of my pursuit. I needed to find someone named in the files who had been in June’s orbit while she was spying and who could identify her. Might such a person lie to protect June, especially if they were a fellow CIA agent? Sure. But if someone happened to identify Jerrie as June, there would seem to be no reason for them to lie in that direction.

When I reread June’s file looking for people who provably had eyeballs on her while she was spying, I came up with a very short list. Most of the people she met with were her case officers and covert allies, all of whom would be under secrecy agreements. Fidel Castro, by then quite aged, would have been hard to get hold of, but in the summer of 2013 I traveled to Washington, D.C., anyway and met with a Cuban official. Unfortunately, Castro’s health was deteriorating, and I was unable to get through with my written questions.

Fresh off that failure, I went back to the documents and combed them for a peripheral bystander who might have observed June in person. This was no easy task since the vast majority of people named in these documents were now dead. The vast majority, that is, but thankfully not all.

Fortuna Calvo had been a twenty-five-year-old reporter at Vision magazine in 1960, when she was in the same social set as June Cobb. Vision was a Spanish-language weekly based in New York that presented capitalism’s allure to a Latin American audience. For some reason, in June’s early days as an agent, June was like a satellite circling the Manhattan headquarters of Vision.

For instance, when June needed to contact her CIA handlers, she sometimes did so by phoning Igor Gordevitch, a senior editor at Vision. June also socialized with Jorge Losada, another Vision employee whom the agency used to send coded signals to Cobb. I also noticed that when her case officer wired her money, June picked it up at a Western Union that was only a short walk from Vision. The Manhattan block where Vision was located was a beehive of Cobb activity all throughout 1960.

But it was Fortuna Calvo’s positioning at the moment when Cobb was recruited into the CIA that interested me most. According to June’s file, a senior CIA officer named Harry Hermsdorf recruited June in April 1960 on a trip to Havana while he was posing as a journalist traveling alongside a team from Vision. Hermsdorf was undercover as a German journalist, but his companions from Vision included Gordevitch, Losada, and the young Fortuna Calvo. Hermsdorf penned two memos about this trip, detailing how it was Losada who introduced him to June at the hotel where the entire group was staying. So if Fortuna had seen June Cobb on this trip, she absolutely, positively had seen the woman who was recruited into the CIA.

When I reached out to Fortuna Calvo-Roth, she was retired and still living in Manhattan after having become the first female editor of a major magazine at Vision, among other accomplishments. Admittedly, I didn’t say up front that a goal from the interview was an identification. It just seemed too far-fetched to bring up double identities, even in the form of a question. Instead, I explained that I was researching a number of fascinating women who had worked with Fidel Castro, and that I was especially interested in his American assistant, June Cobb.

I designed a sheet of images for the identification featuring nine headshots, mostly of women who had worked with Castro. I included a photo of Jerrie, and in fact I used two. I also included two of another American woman accused of spying in Cuba, Marjorie Lennox. As for June, I used just one image—the picture June had sent to Newman. It was the clearest image by far and had unimpeachable sourcing.

Fortuna was gracious and came prepared to discuss the Havana trip, which I’d indicated was my area of interest. She remembered the trip well and recalled how she’d traveled into Cuba with her editors, Losada and Gordevitch. They were accompanied by a man whose name she didn’t recall but who was handsome, she said, and openly affiliated with the CIA. That would have been Hermsdorf.

She remembered spending a lovely day at a beach with Hermsdorf and Losada, enjoying drinks while Harry spoke far too openly about his role with the agency. They were all hoping to get firsthand information about Castro’s government, and the hot topic for journalists and spies alike was whether Cuba was turning communist.

As Fortuna reminisced about the trip, I asked if she’d come into contact with Castro or any of the women who worked in his office. She hadn’t. I then asked if she’d run into June Cobb, who’d worked for Fidel as a secretary of some sort in Havana. She said she hadn’t run into June Cobb in Cuba, but that she knew June well and saw her regularly, but always in New York.

And there was my moment. I brought out my photo sheet and asked if she saw a picture of June on it, or if she recognized any of the women.

She didn’t recognize the other women, but she did recognize June. She pointed first to one, then to the other photo of Jerrie Cobb.

But Fortuna was perplexed, because June never wore her hair that way. She held her hands over Jerrie’s hair to better isolate the face. Yes, this looked like June, she said, but she never styled herself that way. I asked how June typically looked, and she said June always wore her hair in a chignon, an elegant French bun. June evidently wore the chignon without fail, and Fortuna couldn’t figure out why she wasn’t wearing it in the photos. We lingered over the photo sheet for some time, and while Fortuna was sure Jerrie was June, the hair just “wasn’t right.”

I turned her attention to the photo June had sent to Newman. “Was this June?”

No, she said very quickly and certainly. That was not June.

I made sure to pin down how Fortuna had come in contact with her. She said she frequently saw June at media events related to Latin American issues in New York City. Their contacts all took place around 1960, when June was engaged with the circle of employees at Vision. Fortuna was under the impression June was a fellow member of the media and found her to be both serious and professional. I asked Fortuna if she liked June Cobb, and she said succinctly and without elaborating that she did.

I’d intentionally sought evidence that could be trusted, and I’d found it. I saw no reason Fortuna would lie in the direction of identifying June as Jerrie, and her identification was a confident one. The June Cobb that Fortuna had known was the one in contact with Vision magazine employees and therefore the CIA, and Fortuna had identified her as Jerrie Cobb, but with a different hairstyle. Having found myself in a wilderness of mirrors, I realized I might have just glimpsed my first unrefracted light.

INTERLUDE 2

Ponca City and Intelligence

If emails can say nothing substantive, Jerrie and my correspondences after Newark did just that. I certainly didn’t share with her that I’d launched a major investigation to find out who she really was. Obviously, she hadn’t been very truthful with me, and I now viewed her ongoing claim that she was still traveling down to the Amazon jungle with great skepticism. A vibrant seventysomething could have pulled it off, but she was eighty now and appeared to have been incapable of jungle flying for some time.

Some days I’d check my emails, and there she’d be, saying that God had put us together for a reason and that I was the one to do her story. One time she announced that her story could be told only by me or by “someone else who knew her well.” Considering that in our last meeting, I had confronted her about being June, I wondered what story she was referring to.

While Jerrie and I were still working on the film, I’d taken a magical journey out west to retrace her life, visiting her childhood stomping grounds and touring the facility where she’d passed the astronaut tests. It had been a joyful adventure, filled with the promise of scouting locations for our beautiful film. I now found myself steaming down to Oklahoma on a very different mission—to untangle which little Cobb girls had grown up where.

That trip yielded few results. When my assistant director, Heath Hofmeister, and I visited the American Legion, the Ponca City Senior Center, the Cobb Café, and June’s old neighborhood, we got the same story. People knew a pilot named Jerrie Cobb had ties to the region, but no one could remember anything about June. Still, a lot of years had passed. Our frustrating trip was peppered with fragmentary findings and only a few tangible traces of either girl, leaving us more baffled than before we set off on our journey.

Ponca City, a small town built around an oil refinery with a population of about twenty thousand, was an important nexus for both women because both claimed it as their hometown during my primary years of interest. Jerrie’s parents moved to Ponca when she was nineteen, and she lived there intermittently throughout the 1950s, in between flying stints to South America. June also stayed with her family in Ponca City in between her jungle forays in the 1950s. It was hard to imagine the women’s paths didn’t cross, considering their mutual interest in both Latin America and aviation. Crossed paths, that is, if they were two distinctly different people. So were they?

Throughout their childhoods, yes. Upon my return from Oklahoma, I tried charting their earliest years by way of vintage newspaper clippings and had better luck. Thankfully, it was common practice back in the day to publish blurbs on family reunions and birthday parties for elementary schoolers. It was these trivial articles that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that a girl named Jerrie Cobb had grown up with her family and moved around the Oklahoma region much as her autobiography describes. Similarly, June Cobb was born and raised in Ponca City, where she performed piano recitals from grade school on. So we can be certain that there were two little girls named Cobb, and that they weren’t the same person, at least not in their childhoods.

So when did their astonishing similarities begin? As near as I can tell, their patterns began to synchronize when they were young women in Ponca City in the early 1950s, when both were old enough to join a government agency. Their first extended geographic alignment occurred when both were living in Ponca City, while June recovered from a jungle disease and Jerrie was residing with her parents while honing her flying skills in the occasional air race. That period lasted about two years, after which both set sail for Latin America in the fall of 1953, with June returning to her boyfriend’s home region in Colombia and Jerrie visiting the Amazon jungle for the first time.

It can be almost impossible to pinpoint exactly when a person first intersected with the world of intelligence, but Heath and I discovered a clue at the Pioneer Women’s Museum in Ponca City. Jerrie has a featured exhibit at the museum—and so does June Cobb’s stepsister, who recorded an oral history interview telling the story of her recruitment into American intelligence as a very young woman from Ponca City.

AVIATION, PONCA CITY, AND THE BIRTH OF MODERN U.S. INTELLIGENCE

Lillian Bowles Taylor, June Cobb’s stepsister from her father’s second marriage, was a fresh-faced graduate of Ponca City High when she saw an ad in the local newspaper announcing that jobs were available out at the Ponca City Airport. An agreement between President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill authorized the establishment of seven training facilities for Royal Air Force pilots on American soil, and one of the airfields being used by this program was in Ponca City.

The year was 1941, and the Brits, who were under siege from German attacks, needed a safe haven to train their novice recruits. The seven U.S.-based schools of aviation where American employees trained British fliers were kept on the down-low, maintaining security. Lillian Bowles Taylor was among the first to be hired after graduating from June Cobb’s high school, and she went right into training at Ponca’s Darr School of Aeronautics.

That’s when Lillian was recruited into America’s embryonic pre–World War II intelligence service, a little-known program that predated the establishment of the Office of Strategic Services. As Lillian tells the story, America needed recruits who knew the local landscape to keep their eyes open for foreign spies, “so at twenty, I became a secret agent.” She was also trained on the aviation LINK simulator, so she could teach British fliers how to manage a warplane. In Ponca City, Lillian Bowles became not just a professional spy but also an accomplished aviation instructor.

After America entered the war, Lillian advanced in intelligence, taking a post in Texas working for Braniff Aviation in an “undercover” capacity. When peacetime resumed, she settled back in Ponca City to start a family, where she was employed by the FAA for several decades. But when she went to retire, her early secret assignments were so covert, those years weren’t tabulated toward her government pension. So Lillian sued Uncle Sam—and won.

Begrudgingly, the United States had to acknowledge the existence of this once-secret program, confirming that young women like Lillian could be scooped up and hired by American intelligence, while simultaneously being trained in advanced aviation. And it all happened in Jerrie and June Cobb’s hometown.

JUNE COBB AND HER EARLY AVIATION TIES

Ponca City newspaper clippings give us a portrait of June Cobb that’s very different from the one in her CIA file. Young June was quite the budding artist, performing piano recitals throughout her elementary school years, then as a teen turning her attention to dramatics. In her senior year at Ponca High, she co-directed a play, The Youngest, by Philip Barry, about a young man who hides his true self to satisfy the requirements of his inheritance. As June picked up her high school diploma, the Darr School of Aeronautics was just closing, but World War II was still raging on, as was the recruitment structure it spawned.

The summer after she graduated high school, June suddenly turned her attention to aviation and somehow developed a fluency with military correspondences. So much so that when she arrived on the University of Oklahoma campus as a freshman majoring in drama, she immediately helped to launch a Civil Air Patrol chapter, where she taught a class on military communications. How she gained that expertise is a void in her résumé.

Contrary to the conflicting stories told in her CIA file, June didn’t last long at college, where her most notable activities were frequent stays in the infirmary and helping run the Civil Air Patrol squadron. She dropped out before completing her sophomore year, and dove headlong into a new career—in aviation. It was at about this time that the CIA was established, and June suddenly took off for Mexico City, where, among other things, she worked for Pan American airlines.

In 1949, when June split for South America to work for another aviation firm, Jerrie, at seventeen, would have been too young for international travel. How and when their “impersonating for a while” began is hard to discern, but Jerrie’s first brush with government contracts would have been her international warplane ferrying assignments for Fleetways. Her two autobiographies conflict on that start date: one says Fleetways hired her in the fall of 1953, and the other claims it was in 1952, when she turned twenty-one. To have intersected with intelligence much before then, she would have had to be older than her stated age.

But if you impersonate once, you might do it again. And that complicated reality is at the heart of this game.

THREE

Catherine Taaffe

3.1 FINDING TAAFFE

Mr. Goldsmith: Is it customary for someone over the years to use many different operational aliases, as many as one hundred, for example?

Ms. Scaletti: One hundred sounds like an awful lot…. It depends on the sensitivity of the place or how small it is. You could use the same operational alias with three or four people or you could change operational aliases with every single person.

Mr. Goldsmith: If you changed it for every single person, you would have a tough time remembering which one you used for which particular individual.

Ms. Scaletti: No, you really wouldn’t because, don’t forget, it is like handling members of your family…. Say you handle ten people with an alias. That is just like talking to ten of your children. You are not going to forget that. A lot of times it is only a first-name alias. Then when you move to a different city or different station, either you can use the same alias all over again with different people or you can use a new alias. These are people you are talking to every single day. It is not like remembering “Gee, what did I call myself four months ago when I was talking to so and so.”

—CIA agent Elsie Scaletti testifying to a House committee in 1978 while under an alias

CIA aliases are like mice: if you see one, you probably have a hundred. My jeep engine was still warm from my trip to Oklahoma when Dr. Newman emailed and said he’d stumbled on to yet another woman of interest. Jim Lesar at the Assassination Research Center had sent John a five-hundred-page Freedom of Information Act document loaded with FBI reports on another female spy, and this one had astonishing similarities to June and Jerrie both.

Catherine Taaffe

Catherine Quinby Taaffe was an FBI informant and CIA ally who funneled a tremendous amount of information about Fidel Castro’s government to the United States during the year he took power. Taaffe’s snooping started the day Castro took office, and she reported regularly until her cover was blown in early 1960. Weeks after Taaffe left Cuba, June Cobb took over as the hot new U.S. intelligence source in Havana. But it was only a matter of time before Cobb, too, was suspected of spying, and by September 1960, three months into her espionage career, she was in the same position as Taaffe—unable to return to the Cuban island.

FIGURE 3A. This FBI report suggests that Catherine Taaffe had ties to other government agencies, including the CIA.

Click here to view as text.

As with June, Taaffe’s marks were Fidel Castro and his bearded lieutenants. But unlike Cobb, Taaffe reported on the nuanced power struggles taking place inside Castro’s lair. Ironically, even though June was described as a “secretary to Fidel Castro,” she rarely reported on his movements or plans. It was Taaffe who supplied the U.S. government with its most intimate window into Castro’s thinking throughout 1959.

Taaffe delivered her riveting reports through covert meetings with the FBI, after which J. Edgar Hoover disseminated her observations into the highest reaches of the government, including to the CIA. Figure 3B is an excerpt from an FBI report that illustrates the incredible insight Taaffe had into Castro’s inner circle during the first weeks of his administration. Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos were Cuba’s second- and third-ranking leaders, behind Castro.

FIGURE 3B. Three weeks into Castro’s dictatorship, Taaffe describes to the FBI the power struggle between Cuba’s second- and third-ranking leaders.

Click here to view as text.

I was in no hurry to delve into yet another confusing persona, especially one whose narrative unfolded in government jargon. But once I warmed up to the Taaffe file, I found a lot more to tangibly hold on to than in the Cobb saga. This woman had produced a lot more information, and she swashbuckled her way into more hair-raising spy capers than June Cobb.

According to the FBI’s sources, Taaffe would gamble away thousands of dollars in a Havana casino one night, then get into a conversation about killing Castro the next. When she wasn’t gambling away a fortune, she was selling millions of dollars in warplanes to communist dictators. At least, they thought she was selling them planes. She was actually assessing their military capabilities and reporting back to U.S. intelligence. If you were a communist dictator, Catherine Taaffe was your kryptonite.

Taaffe has been almost completely overlooked by historians, despite her incredible historical positioning. That’s in part because she was a woman, but also because the FBI agents who took down her reports made a point to belittle her efforts. Still, a careful reading of the available documents—the hundreds of pages in the JFK Assassination Records, plus the exhaustive FOIA release that I received from John Newman—tells the tale. Catherine Taaffe was a force of nature, who, up to this point, left scarcely a fingerprint while slipping the United States a mountain of information on Cuba. It was a dazzling feat of espionage, one that I suspect took considerable doing.

Extraordinarily important espionage sources are often camouflaged in the paperwork that disseminates their findings. We need look no further than the saga of Alan Turing, the British mathematician who cracked the Nazis’ Enigma encryption, to see how this tactic was deployed. After Turing successfully decoded the Germans’ coded communications, British intelligence could never write cables or memos that would give away this fact. The remedy was to dress up all written reports derived from the Enigma by attributing their information to other false but viable sources. The rule about disguising Enigma-based information was so hard and fast that if no believable alternative source could be found, then that information was never disseminated to the field, no matter how many lives the information could save.

Wouldn’t America’s deepest penetration into Castro’s new government have been worth protecting similarly in her paperwork? And why did almost every FBI report on Catherine Taaffe make a point to mock her as having a “spy complex” while fast-tracking her information to the top reaches of the U.S. government? An agent’s alias could be limited to a tiny circle, just as Elsie Scaletti described, or it could be used to shield an agent in the paperwork, with very little footprint beyond that.

John Newman, the first author to analyze the Catherine Taaffe saga in depth, devoted three chapters in his book Where Angels Tread Lightly to her incredible escapades. He also delivered a lecture at a JFK symposium titled “The Possible Double Identity of June Cobb and Catherine Taaffe.”

After just a preliminary look at the Taaffe file, I agreed that she had similarities to June, but her similarities to Jerrie were even more astonishing. This Rubik’s cube had become exponentially more complex. Still, I had to wonder if I was finally getting my first look from two directions at who this person really was.

3.2 THREE-WAY ASTONISHING SIMILARITIES

June Cobb and Catherine Taaffe

June Cobb and Catherine Taaffe shared a common purpose: the targeting and removal of Fidel Castro and his communist government. Both were spying on his inner circle, and both were reporting back to U.S. intelligence. Both were building an underground network in Havana to flip Fidel’s lieutenants against him. Both of their underground networks hinged on one high-level source at a Cuban agency called INRA. INRA was the governmental division in charge of agrarian reform, or the nationalization of holdings, and as such, it was the mechanism by which communism was taking over Cuba.

When Taaffe and June weren’t perfectly parallel, their similarities checkerboarded. Throughout 1960, Cobb delivered her reports to her case officers in the CIA. Before that, in 1959, Taaffe was offloading her information through debriefings with the FBI.

Their astonishing similarities continue right down to the smallest details. Cobb and Taaffe both lived in hotels in New York City and Havana as their primary residences. While they were in Cuba, they both stayed at the Havana Hilton, in rooms whose numbers re-ordered the same digits—with Taaffe in room 2031 and Cobb in 2130. Both sent their hotel bills to Castro’s government, which paid up since both women had convinced the Cubans that they were working for them.

During her stint in Cuba, FBI sources reported that Taaffe had previously worked with the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. That matches June Cobb, who was a contract employee for the Narcotics Bureau while helping them bust her fiancé’s South American drug ring. But in addition to running drug stings and undermining Castro, the women shared a third target—communist presidents of Guatemala. In 1954, while the CIA was overthrowing President Jacobo Arbenz, Taaffe stiffed him on an arms deal. Later, in 1961, as ex-president Juan José Arévalo was pondering another political run, June spied on him under the guise of assisting him with a book project. The fact that the women targeted Castro from two different directions matches their Guatemala interference: Taaffe targeted the country’s militaristic interests, while Cobb focused on its communist propaganda.

Just as was the case with June, census records, news clippings, and family members vouch for Catherine Taaffe as being a separate person who is neither June nor Jerrie. The FBI reports even say they investigated Taaffe’s family and residential listing in New York, finding no indication of any problems with her existence.

So is it possible that Catherine Taaffe and June Cobb were two American spies sent in on similar assignments one after the other, and it’s their analogous operations that explain their synchronicity? Yes. But if that’s the case, how do we explain Catherine Taaffe and Jerrie Cobb, whose similarities are even more astonishing?

Jerrie Cobb and Catherine Taaffe

You wouldn’t think there’d be too many women in the early 1950s who were in the business of selling and delivering warplanes to Latin American dictators, but that’s the tiny circle that both Catherine Taaffe and Jerrie Cobb were in. According to numerous FBI reports, Taaffe was a registered arms dealer who sold U.S. warplanes to banana republics in both Central and South America. Meanwhile, Jerrie was the head of South American deliveries for Fleetways, the company that had cornered the market on warplane deliveries to Central and South America. Catherine Taaffe sold ’em, and Jerrie Cobb delivered ’em. It’s as if we’re looking at the same operation from two different angles.

The FBI described Taaffe as a brown-haired thirtysomething mother of six from South Carolina, who sold arms with her second husband, the older Colonel Randall Taaffe, an ex-military pilot who had founded a plane parts business out of their home in Miami. But by the summer of 1950, Catherine was brokering warplanes deals on her own, with the colonel technically still her partner but nowhere to be seen. Meanwhile, as early as 1952, Jerrie partnered with an older military pilot named Jack Ford, who hired her as a pilot for Fleetways, his plane delivery service. Not long after Ford hired the twenty-one-year-old Jerrie in Miami and fell in love with her, he put her in charge of all deliveries to South America, effectively managing the deliveries into Taaffe’s warplane sales zone.

Both Taaffe and Fleetways worked in concert with, and under the oversight of, U.S. Armed Forces and the State Department. But both firms likely also had a healthy espionage component. Certainly Taaffe’s did. She used her warplane deals to pump information back to U.S. intelligence about counteroffers and the going price of Russian MiGs.

FIGURE 3C. Taaffe tells the FBI about other warplane offers the Cuban government is receiving.

Click here to view as text.

Once Taaffe probed the holes in a dictator’s air defense, she gummed up the works with slow deliveries or bait and switched her planes to revolutions that were friendly to America. If Fleetways had an espionage component, that information has yet to be declassified, but Jerrie was arrested for spying on her first delivery for Fleetways.

Jerrie’s Flying What Taaffe’s Selling, Summer of 1950

Catherine Taaffe made her warplane sales debut back in August 1950, when she offered a fleet of warplanes to the chief of the armed forces of Venezuela while he was visiting Washington, D.C. As a part of her package to Venezuela, the FBI reported that Taaffe included a few training models, so novice pilots could learn to fly the planes. That same summer, lo and behold, Jerrie bought herself a twin-seat training warbird similar to what Taaffe was selling.

FIGURE 3D. Left: An F-47 fighter, a model Taaffe was selling in August 1950. Right: Jerrie on the PT-23 trainer she purchased in the late summer of 1950.

The story of how young Jerrie financed her warplane, as recounted in her autobiography, is quite remarkable. After taking a gap year before college, she played professional softball for the Sooner Queens and used her salary to achieve her dream of buying the plane. Purchasing the surplus PT-23 set Jerrie back over $5,000, when adjusted for inflation. But I found her playing softball in fewer than ten games that season, three of which were exhibitions for charity, and her local newspaper consistently referred to the Sooner Queens as playing in an amateur league.

A year or so after buying the warplane, Jerrie met Jack Ford and began delivering similar planes to South America. The timing of Jerrie’s plane purchase lines up within weeks to Taaffe’s debut selling similar planes. That made me wonder exactly when Jerrie’s association with Ford and his surplus warplanes began. The timing matchups between them did not stop there.

3.3 TAAFFE ON THE TIMELINE

Adding Catherine Taaffe on my June-Jerrie timeline revealed an interrelated dance involving all three personas. In order to evaluate them all together, it’s helpful to analyze the timeline from two different perspectives: (1) the big picture, where you look at which personas are active in chunks of months or years, and (2) in high resolution, where you scrutinize their movements on a day-to-day basis. First, let’s look at the big picture and hone in on 1959, which was Catherine Taaffe’s intelligence heyday.

Catherine Taaffe, America’s Best Spy in Cuba, 1959

Throughout 1959, Catherine Taaffe was constantly cycling in and out of Havana, ostensibly conducting business in sugar and plane sales, but actually serving as America’s primary intelligence source on the Cuban government. Her access to Castro’s leadership, detailed in reports that started the day he took power, suggests she was connected to Castro’s regime even before his arrival. Meanwhile, June Cobb was also supposed to be in Cuba for much of 1959, but unlike Taaffe, who reported to the FBI almost daily, she left very few traces.

The story of June Cobb in Cuba in 1959 is told in her file and to Congress with little tangible documentation. A search of the JFK Assassination Records for “June Cobb” yields zero government documents dated that year, although June did speak to the FBI in early reports that have yet to be declassified. June even admitted that she loaned out her identity to another woman to travel to Cuba in ’59, putting a question mark on her whereabouts and veracity. June’s fulsome traces in Cuba began only after the CIA approached her in April 1960, several weeks after Taaffe’s spying days were done. See Figure 3E.

FIGURE 3E. Taaffe and June’s Cuban spying, 1959–60.

What’s left for a researcher to evaluate is a paper trail that checkerboards beautifully: Taaffe’s spying generated reams of reports in 1959, after which, June took over, beginning her own smaller Cuban dossier in the spring of 1960.

But things get really interesting when we zoom in for the granular details, because whichever persona was active, be it Taaffe or June, she was performing the same dance of synchronized swimming and checkerboarding with Jerrie. Let’s take a look at a typical section of the three-way timeline in Figure 3F.

FIGURE 3F. The three-way timeline, October 1959.

If the pattern in Figure 3F looks familiar, that’s because it is. All throughout 1959, Jerrie and Taaffe create a similar mosaic when their whereabouts are plotted on a timeline, as Jerrie and June did in Chapter 2 (Figure 2F). Notice that I was able to use the same location key for the cities they traveled through the most. Once again, both cycled through Miami and New York City, and their alternating appearances every few days have a familiar rhythm. The only difference is that this time it’s Taaffe, not June, who’s doing the dancing with Jerrie.

June always had an excuse to be out of the picture when Jerrie and Taaffe were active, and in Figure 3F, her excuse was a hospitalization in Cuba for agranulocytosis. Agranulocytosis is one of the many jungle disease holdovers that caused June to disappear repeatedly throughout her life story. While her disappearances are already suspect, agranulocytosis happens to be the same phony excuse she gave Castro when she left Havana for Washington to sign up for the CIA.

With June out of the picture, Jerrie and Taaffe were doing some impressive checkerboarding and synchronized swimming. Mid-October ’59 began a period of intense activity: Taaffe popped up at a meeting with Cubans in New York City, as reported by the FBI, after which Jerrie emerged in flyover country for an appearance at a road rally. From there, Jerrie piloted her Aero Commander to Pensacola for a weeklong military competition, where she was pictured in news articles, newsreels, and photos.

The day after Jerrie left the Florida Panhandle, Taaffe got in touch with the FBI from a Miami hotel room. For the next few weeks, Taaffe stayed in close touch with the bureau, updating it on a plot she was orchestrating against Castro. Meanwhile, Jerrie had no documented appearances.

I could show examples of checkerboarding and synchronized swimming until the cows come home, but the timeline was beginning to suggest a deeper narrative. Obviously, if an identity illusion was in play for espionage purposes, it was created for a reason. That’s why I began logging world events onto the women’s timeline, particularly those involving Cuban-American relations. October 28, 1959, in Figure 3F, corresponds to a seminal night in Cuban history.

3.4 EXFILTRATIONS

A Fateful Night for Cuba, October 28, 1959

In the fall of 1959, American officials were still hopeful that democracy and capitalism could win over Cuba, but the window for success was rapidly closing. Taaffe had been sounding the alarm all year that Castro’s views were moving to the left while simultaneously organizing a right-wing underground to oppose him. Cubans who joined her movement did so at great peril, since Castro had adopted swift execution by firing squad as a powerful, persuasive response.

That October, Jerrie Cobb appeared at the Tyndall World Wide Weapons Meet from October 23 to 26 as an honored guest, as reported by her hometown paper, The Daily Oklahoman. Tyndall was a military competition where elite squadrons demonstrated the latest fighter jet technologies by vying for rocketry and gunnery honors. Jerrie, who was not yet famous for astronautics, spent four days training with America’s top interceptor jet teams on aircraft designed to head off enemy planes in the event of an attack.

Her hard work paid off, and on a night flight over the Gulf of Mexico, Jerrie broke the sound barrier with a co-pilot. It was an unprecedented achievement for a woman, yet The Daily Oklahoman was the only paper that ran with the scoop, in its October 29, 1959, evening edition.

The night of October 28, 1959, was also the date of a different notorious flight. One of Castro’s beloved revolutionary leaders, Camilo Cienfuegos, on the heels of an argument he’d just had with Fidel, took off in a private plane and never returned. The fate of his flight has been hotly debated because the remains of his Cessna never were found. Cienfuegos is mourned to this day as a founding father in Cuba, but his true allegiances are a ripe area for additional study.

That’s because Catherine Taaffe and June Cobb both knew Cienfuegos. Camilo began confiding in Taaffe almost immediately after Castro took power. Incredibly, Cienfuegos shared with Taaffe that he was working to marginalize the influence of Che Guevara in the Cuban government by attempting to maneuver the Marxist out of his military role (Figure 3B). That’s a lot of information for the third-ranking Cuban to be sharing with an American spy less than three weeks into Castro’s new government. Taaffe glowingly gushed to the FBI that Camilo was “the most intelligent and most reasonable man among the military personnel in Havana.”

June Cobb also listed Cienfuegos as an associate of hers in a report that her case officer typed up, before someone crossed his name off the list. The nature of their relationship is equally opaque. One provocative document I found in Cobb’s file said that Cienfuegos was working with Vicky Morgan, another Cobb ally, to create a “pictorial essay” of the Cuban revolution. The officer who cabled that information cryptically added, “If you know what I mean.” Vicky was the sister of William Morgan, an American ally of Castro’s whom Fidel put to death after learning that Morgan betrayed him. One could wonder if the “pictorial essay” that Cienfuegos was crafting with Vicky was the identification of communist hardliners for the U.S. government. Cuba celebrates Cienfuegos as a heroic figure to this day, but the Cobb documents gave me pause, as did Taaffe’s confidential whisperings with Cienfuegos.

By the time Cienfuegos disappeared over the ocean, the United States was deeply engaged in exfiltrating covert allies who were in danger in Cuba. Many whose escape the agency aided were members of Taaffe’s network of Cubans opposing Castro’s communist tilt. If America had the positioning to do so on October 28, 1959, would we have chosen to shoot down Cienfuegos or provide a jet escort? Taaffe’s glowing assessment hints at the escort, which could explain Jerrie’s training for an interceptor flight off the Florida coast. While a jet escort could have been accomplished without Jerrie, she had intimate knowledge of the Cuban coastline from her many stopovers for Fleetways. And if she was June Cobb or Catherine Taaffe or used those names for spying, then she knew Cienfuegos and would have been a valuable spotter for identifying his private plane from a distance.

The day after Cienfuegos disappeared was the day Jerrie’s night flight made the news. She was photographed beside a twin-seat interceptor jet with Lieutenant James Jabara, America’s top gun at the time.

Exfiltrations

Exfiltrations are dramatic clandestine operations that bring together many aspects of spycraft. Disguises, undetected flights, action-oriented escapes, and chases are common components of exfiltrations. They are performed by highly trained specialists and are one of the most daring and dangerous maneuvers in espionage.

Throughout 1959, a female CIA agent code-named AMCOO who was an exfiltration specialist was involved in the covert escape of several prominent Cubans who’d turned against Fidel. Though the cryptonym AMCOO has yet to be decoded with certainty, researchers have proposed two women as being AMCOO—Delia Failde, who owned a Tampa shipping business, and the arms dealer Catherine Taaffe.

On genealogical websites, I could find no boat or plane manifests for Delia Failde traveling in and out of Cuba in 1959, during AMCOO’s exfiltration missions, or in any other year. Yet according to CIA files, the agent called AMCOO traveled frequently into Cuba. Meanwhile, Catherine Taaffe, who is directly mentioned in one of the CIA’s AMCOO exfiltration documents, traveled from Havana to Miami five times in 1959, while AMCOO was lining up escapes. AMCOO exfiltrated several Cuban rebels who were members of Taaffe and Cobb’s underground networks.

In her autobiography Woman into Space, Jerrie tells the story of her own involvement in just such a high-stakes exfiltration. The year was 1955, and as usual, Jerrie was ferrying a surplus military plane to a remote region in South America. This time she was delivering a specialized seaplane to Paraguay, but upon arrival, she learned the craft was needed for use in an urgent exfiltration. The person in need of rescue was none other than the fleeing Argentinian president, Juan Perón.

Jerrie landed the watercraft in the dark of night on a piranha-filled river, where she was met by Paraguayan government officials. According to Jerrie, they wanted her to fly the exfiltration for them, but she refused. She writes:

What we didn’t do was go rescue Juan Perón, who had been overthrown as dictator of Argentina. He had fled that nation and was aboard a Paraguayan gunboat in the harbor at Buenos Aires. It was blockaded by Argentine ships. The Paraguayans planned for me to fly over and land in the harbor so they could get their great friend off the gunboat. As far as I know, the plot worked, as Perón got away. But I wasn’t his pilot.

Instead, Jerrie asked the Paraguayans for a military pilot so she could train him for the job. Jerrie was enshrined in the National Aviation Hall of Fame, in part, due to her renowned ability to perform short takeoffs and landings in extreme settings. The Paraguayan pilot was lucky to be trained on the PBY seaplane by a pilot who’d mastered all the skills necessary for a clandestine exfiltration. Needless to say, not very many women have found themselves in the middle of a covert exfiltration of a world leader. Jerrie Cobb had.

Circling back to the mysterious disappearance of Cienfuegos, within two weeks of his going missing, newspapers were reporting rumors that he was living in a Cuban neighborhood in Tampa under a new identity. With Cienfuegos gone and Fidel tacking to the left, Cuba was going communist. Few could claim to have opposed that outcome with more vigor than Catherine Taaffe.

3.5 A BAD DEAL FOR FIDEL

If you were a communist dictator and Catherine Taaffe turned up to assist you, you’d better hold on to your secrets, your loyal lieutenants, and your wallet, because she was after all three. Two months into Castro’s presidency, Taaffe warned the U.S. authorities that he was moving in a communist direction. Six months in, she passed along the assessment that “the opposition groups are convinced that in order to save many hundreds of lives in Cuba, the Castro brothers, Raúl and Fidel, must be eliminated.” She then concocted a wild scheme to kidnap an enemy of Fidel’s to lure the Cuban leader into a deadly ambush. Meanwhile, Castro was trusting her with sensitive military contracts and escrowing millions of dollars to seal a warplane deal. Catherine Taaffe was a class A saboteur and a world-class con. She was also one of the most effective weapons in America’s Cold War arsenal.

Intelligence agencies denied she was their agent, calling her a “busy-body,” a “nuisance,” and a “would-be Mata Hari”—while hanging on her every word. Hoover personally typed up her greatest hits and fast-tracked them to the State Department and the CIA. When Taaffe expressed displeasure with America’s ambassador to Cuba, he was gone within days. There was nothing “would be” about Catherine Taaffe. In the cloak-and-dagger world of Mata Haris, she was the real McCoy.

All good things must come to an end, and shortly after Camilo Cienfuegos’s disappearance, Taaffe came under suspicion in Havana. It’s possible her work turning Castro’s loyalists against him was too overt. Maybe playing a role in exfiltrating his lieutenants exposed her. She herself blamed loose lips at the FBI, to whom she was funneling her information. Either way, by November 1959, Taaffe believed her “usefulness” was over, and she lodged a complaint at the bureau that its shoddy work had blown her cover. Perhaps that’s why the FBI launched an investigation into whether Taaffe was a Cuban agent, asking questions that could save her in the field. Of course, she wasn’t. But she was soon finished in Havana. That didn’t stop her from delivering one final gut punch to Castro on her way out.

The Great Plane Con

In the winter of 1959, at the end of Fidel’s first year in office, tensions with the United States were escalating, and he needed to bolster his tiny air force to protect his island from attack. Even though her days in Cuba were numbered, Taaffe dangled an offer that was too good to refuse. Of course, by brokering the warplane sale to Cuba, she got up to speed on its air defenses or lack thereof, all the while informing U.S. intelligence.

Fidel’s cash-strapped government scared up the necessary funds and informed Taaffe it had $11.8 million in a Swiss account, $4.5 million of which was escrowed to seal the deal. Taaffe, in turn, had twenty British Hunter Hawker jets on a Belgian runway, and she assured Castro they’d be delivered in a jiffy.

FIGURE 3G. Taaffe entered into a multimillion-dollar warplane deal with Raúl Castro in order to tie up Cuba’s money.

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He should have checked her references. Five years before, Taaffe had stiffed Guatemalan president Arbenz by taking a meeting about a similar purchase and then selling to his enemies instead. Those enemies immediately overthrew him in a CIA-sponsored coup.

As the British jets sat on the Belgian tarmac, Taaffe assured the FBI she controlled the movement of the planes from start to finish and not to worry. Her plan was to keep Cuba militarily vulnerable to an overthrow as long as possible. As Castro’s frustration with her delays mounted, he entered into discussions with other brokers, deals that Taaffe got wind of and reported to the FBI. Evidently, the Czechs had twenty Russian MiGs at a better price than her older planes, but in order to buy the MiGs, Castro needed his money back—so Taaffe began to stall.

The brazenness of her con was nothing short of staggering. Taaffe was already on thin ice in Cuba, yet she somehow hooked Castro into a bad deal and then tied up his millions, delaying his ability to defend the island. It was a breathtaking deception and a damaging one.

Catherine Taaffe had wounded Castro. Fidel was now intent on taking his revenge.

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3.6 THE SCAR

After double-crossing Castro by slow-walking his planes, Taaffe retreated to American soil to set up shop in a Miami hotel room. Once there, she resumed her relentless scheming. She wasted no time running to the FBI with the names of two Cuban agents who were planning to kidnap an enemy of Castro’s, a plot she’d duped the Cubans into engineering just weeks before. Based on her information, the FBI arrested the Cubans in a high-profile bust. The bureau took all the credit, but Fidel must have known who was behind it.

That was the last straw. Two weeks later, on February 12, 1960, Castro sent two thugs to pay Taaffe a visit. Here’s how she described the incident to the Miami Herald:

It was about 5pm. I had just had dinner in my room and was waiting for the waiter to pick up my tray. There was a knock on the door. I opened the door and there stood two Cubans. When I asked them what they wanted, they called me by my first name and said they had made no mistake. I rushed for the telephone but they grabbed the back of my dress and ripped it. I screamed and one of the men clapped a hand over my mouth and started to choke me at the same time…. Then they began twisting my left arm and one said they would give me something to remember them by. One of them held me tightly and the other held my arm against his chest and took out a long knife with a thin blade. He branded me by cutting the number 26 into my arm. I was scared but that is all I remember.

The reporter Taaffe spoke with was careful not to name her, but her FBI file described the same incident in similar detail.

FIGURE 3H. A section from the FBI report on the attack on Catherine Taaffe.

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While not showing Taaffe’s face with the article, the Herald did publish a photo of her scar, which was so small, it was revealed from behind two drugstore Band-Aids. I tried to replicate that wound on an orange with a seven-inch blade, and it was difficult to accomplish, even without the orange putting up a struggle. The wound as pictured in the Herald is a poor match to the long thin knife that Taaffe described and the long arc of resentments she would carry from it.

FIGURE 3I. The wound on Taaffe’s left forearm, as published in the Miami Herald, February 17, 1960.

George Southworth, the reporter who interviewed Taaffe for the Herald, also knew June Cobb. A few months after his article ran, while Cobb was being recruited into the agency, her case officer made a list of people June knew—or perhaps more to the point, of people who knew June and could identify her. Southworth’s name made the list, with the added notation that he was “working with FBI.”

Taaffe’s forearm now bore the mark of the 26th of July, the day Castro’s revolution was born. By branding her with his scar, Castro hoped to take from her the one thing a spy needs—the ability to meld into a new persona undetected. She would forever be identifiable to those who knew to look for that scar, no matter what alias she was using or disguise she was wearing. Taaffe’s days as an intelligence informant in Cuba were over. The story of CIA agent June Cobb had just begun.

3.7 SO WHO WAS CATHERINE TAAFFE?

FIGURE 3J. A rare photograph of Taaffe from her high school graduation in 1934, as republished in the Aiken Standard, January 26, 2007.

Just as we saw with June Cobb, a woman named Catherine Taaffe lived a full life in provable ways with a family, genealogical records, and news clippings—and even though her photo is as elusive as a winning lottery ticket, in the one image I was able to find, she does not look like Jerrie.

She was a full decade older than Jerrie or June, born in 1917 as Catherine Quinby in rural South Carolina, and is described in her FBI file as a brown-eyed, brunette, five-foot-tall housewife. Catherine married twice, moving first to Miami and then to New York City, where she intersected with the world of intelligence through her second husband’s small armaments business, an enterprise she ultimately took over.

But Catherine had one thing Jerrie and June never had; in fact, she had six. She gave birth to and raised six children, five of whom were born, toddling, or in grade school while she was defrauding communist dictators in a life-or-death game of catch-me-if-you-can. Her oldest child with her first husband was born in 1938, long before Catherine entered into plane sales and espionage. Almost two decades later, her youngest was born in 1957, in the years between her double-crossing Guatemala and the Cubans. On the night of February 12, 1960, when Catherine was attacked in a Miami hotel room by Castro’s thugs, her children were twenty-one, fourteen, thirteen, nine, seven, and two.

Huley Perry, Catherine’s oldest, happily shared memories with me of his colorful family. Huley was his father’s namesake and a southern gentleman, the product of Catherine’s first marriage after high school. But Catherine had soon felt confined by small-town life and bolted for the bright lights of Miami, where she found new love with her second husband, Randall Dunne Taaffe.

Randall Taaffe was a military aviator, Huley said, a background that afforded him the connections to launch an aviation parts business in the late 1940s. But Randall was also a notorious grifter, dubbed the “Irish Count” by the Los Angeles Times for defrauding his first wife’s family in a check fraud scheme before moving to Miami. Huley lived with the couple in Florida at first but left to live with his father and was unable to confirm that by 1950, Catherine had graduated from plane parts to warplane deals with an Espionage overlay—a word typed in capital letters atop many an early Catherine Taaffe report.

My skepticism, which I shared with the family, centered on how Catherine, or any woman really, could give birth to and raise five children during her peak dictator-conning years. That’s a lot of pregnancies, births, and preschoolers to wrangle while conducting a business that necessitated in-person deals with enemy strongmen in South America, all in an era when network executives were nervous about showing Lucille Ball’s pregnant belly on television.

Then there were the direct conflicts. In one FBI series dated late summer 1950, Catherine was operating out of a hotel in D.C., coordinating the sale of two hundred warplanes to Venezuela. After she bragged in the wrong circle that she could quash an FBI investigation, Hoover pondered bringing her in for a grilling. Meanwhile, she was jetting back and forth to Miami coordinating the necessary State Department clearances. But for all the FBI’s scrutiny, their reports made no mention of one tiny detail: that Catherine was nine months pregnant and gave birth to her fourth child in the middle of this sequence.

Other clues indicate that all is not what it seems within the Taaffe file. The FBI once interviewed a source who’d done business with Catherine and her “crippled negro husband” in Guatemala, a description that doesn’t match Randall Taaffe. But it does match Catherine’s own characterization of her work in Cuba, where she told a U.S. embassy official that she was there “undercover,” working for a “Washington office of security.” She also once told an FBI source that she was really working in Havana for the CIA, a claim that prompted the agency to reflexively deny she was its agent and to accuse her of having a “Mata Hari” complex.

FIGURE 3K. Taaffe described her role in Cuba to the FBI as working “undercover.”

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Hoping to reconcile these conflicts, I reached out to Jaime Taaffe, Catherine’s youngest, who was in elementary school during the years of interest. Jaime was well versed in his mother’s work but, unfortunately, learned about her escapades by reading the U.S. government files, just as I had done. Jaime had only a dim memory of the era but did confirm that the family lived out of a hotel suite in Manhattan, just as the FBI documents described. Their apartment had munitions parts fashioned into ashtrays, he said, and Catherine hosted a sparkling array of international guests at her parties, which Jaime assumed were thrown for her clients.

Both Huley and Jaime believe Catherine worked for the CIA and did so in a capacity the agency could deny. No one in the family had a direct memory of Catherine being attacked by Cubans, but both believed her arm bore a small scar, just like the one pictured in the news article they forwarded to me. I asked Huley and Jaime if Catherine might have agreed to share her name, in an authorized way, for use by another female spy. Neither could discount that possibility. Huley, in particular, didn’t believe his mother would have put their family at risk for retribution by Castro. Both believed their mother was capable of the adventures in her file, but the family has no mementos or snapshots from her travels.

FIGURE 3L. Taaffe’s 1964 passport photo, from her FBI file, marked “Best Copy Available.”

In my mind, there was no question that a colorful woman named Catherine Taaffe led a fascinating life, intersecting with arms deals and intelligence while rearing six children. But I was starting to develop a fresh hypothesis, one that explained all the disparate facts before me. Could the American authorities have recruited women who had had brushes with the law and, as a part of their agreements with the government, loaned out their identities so a highly trained agent could “impersonate them for a while”? And was the woman I knew the one who’d been doing the impersonating?

If Catherine Taaffe accomplished these spy-jinx as written while rearing five of her six children, hats off to Catherine. It was time for me to reconnect with Jerrie Cobb.

INTERLUDE 3

Manatees

Almost two years had passed since our Redbird discussion, and my office shelves were brimming with government files. Jerrie had switched her home base from Texas to Florida, and even though I hadn’t seen her in person, we’d faithfully stayed in touch by email. In the late fall of 2012, I was driving down I-95 to see her again and, for the first time, would be visiting while being well acquainted with both Catherine Taaffe and June Cobb.

This time I was much more on my guard. In Newark, I’d been fully forthcoming, but I no longer felt it was wise to be so open when she clearly hadn’t been so with me. We weren’t working together on the film anymore and had no reason to be discussing her life. My plan was to simply observe her in the light of all that I now knew.

I’ll admit I was concerned for my safety. I did not know the lay of the land, who was behind these secrets and who had a vested interest in keeping them concealed. Where did she stand in that equation? Had she invited me into her life to slowly reveal her true story, or was she hell-bent on concealing it now? And what lengths might the people who were helping her with this deception go to?

The truth is, in the two years since I’d last seen her, I’d come to believe that unlocking the riddle of who Jerrie Cobb was could be an important clue in the Kennedy assassination. After all, Jerrie tacitly admitted that June probably knew who killed Kennedy, but “no one would ever believe her.” That admission was pregnant with the implication that Jerrie knew a lot more than she was saying—about June, about her flight into Redbird, about the day Kennedy was killed, and about those responsible for the deed.

Kennedy’s death was one of my earliest memories. I can call up only a blur—my father crying, the black-and-white funeral on TV, and two grieving children who were my age. The Kennedy assassination was my introduction to death. Worse, to murder. Now I wanted to know why the person I knew, who appeared to have a double identity, had flown a strange crew of reporters into Dallas who didn’t report on Kennedy’s death. And I was willing to take on a certain amount of risk to excavate that information.

As I pulled into Jerrie’s tidy senior community and parked in front of her pale yellow rancher, I knew I was a dramatist because, surely, I was in no danger here. Nevertheless, my plan was to play it safe and avoid any confrontation and look at her anew. Was I taking a page out of her book? Absolutely. I had no illusion I would be any good at this, and I knew I was outmatched. I was ready to be bested by the best.

Still, I had one little advantage going in. I didn’t have any secrets I wasn’t willing to give up. She had a bundle, and that meant the information could only flow my way.

DAY ONE

Jerrie gave me a big hug and a smile, and I thought I did well again at acting normally. She seemed thrilled to see me and said it had been far too long. As we pulled up chairs in her carport, which doubled as a porch, every detail now seemed so important. Her gray sedan with Oklahoma plates, even though none of her residences were in Oklahoma. The dancing frog decal customized on its fender, matching the decal on the tail of all her jungle planes. The Snoopy Red Baron wall hanging, a frivolous tchotchke that seemed out of character but that I suspected honored her father’s service in World War I. She insisted on taking the far seat as we sat down, placement that gave her the best view of the street, with her eyes constantly scanning the horizon.

There was no question she was warmer and more familiar with me ever since I confronted her about being June. Conversation flowed more freely, and she showed a lot more interest in me. She asked what stories I was now interested in telling. I told her I was still drawn to her story but was also looking into other female aviators. She asked which ones, and not ready to hit the hot topics, I threw out World War II’s female aviators—the Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs, and the Air Transport Auxiliary, called ATA. She loved that idea and went off on her encyclopedic knowledge of women’s aviation in World War II.

It was obvious the WASPs held a special place in her heart. These young American women had been trained to ferry warplanes domestically for the war, the same class of aircraft Jerrie later ferried, with no training, for Fleetways. She launched into a vivid story of a WASP rite of passage, in which a newly minted aviator, after her first solo flight, would be taken to a wishing well and tossed in. Jerrie’s ear-to-ear grin as she described their shirttails being cut off and the date written on them made me wonder if she still had her own shirttail in her bedroom somewhere. She was thrilled that I was looking into the WASPs and told me I just had to visit the wishing well at a remote airfield in Texas.

This World War II topic was going well, so I stayed with it and suggested that some women got even closer to the action than the WASPs did. I told her I’d even researched a few female aviators from the ATA who’d gone behind enemy lines.

“No, they didn’t,” she barked.

M: Oh yes, they did.

 J: Where did you hear that?

M: On the internet!

I said it as if I thought the internet was a good source. I decided it might be a good tactic to act like a know-it-all on topics where she was not only the expert, she might have firsthand experience.

“ATA girls never went behind enemy lines,” she said definitively.

M: Oh, absolutely they did! I read all about it on a website. This one lady went behind enemy lines, and she even couriered information.

 J: No, they didn’t.

M: Oh yeah, there are some great stories out there! Like this lady, who was an ATA girl—an American—and she actually risked her life! They dropped her behind the lines and everything, and she did all sorts of stuff!

 J: ATAs did not go behind enemy lines. But they did risk their lives. Many a night, they’d lie in their bunks and hear air raid sirens going…and then the bombs getting closer and closer…munitions that were dropping from the Luftwaffe. But they did not cross enemy lines.

It was the way she pronounced Luftwaffe that caught my ear. The waffe, when you hear a real German speaker, rolls off their tongue and sounds like “vaffa” but has a certain cadence to it. I’d taken three years of German in high school and couldn’t say Luftwaffe like that, although I tried on the way home in the car. Never could nail it. But Jerrie, who supposedly grew up with a speech impediment, said it beautifully. Her entire rendition of being in the bunks hearing munitions, like the wishing well story, had a personal ring to it.

I continued with my World War II theme, telling her my mother’s first husband had flown with the Flying Tigers and had been shot down twice. I was improvising, but in the government files, I’d noticed that Catherine Taaffe was a real fangirl of the Flying Tigers.

Jerrie popped out of her seat when I mentioned the Tigers, and we moved over to one of her favorite places in the home—the wall map.

I hadn’t noticed it before, but in both of Jerrie’s homes where I’d visited, a standard-issue map of the world hung prominently in the living room. She was pointing to various locations where my mother’s first husband might have been deployed, and she knew a lot about the Tigers. It wasn’t often that complete paragraphs cascaded out of her like this. I also noticed that her expertise wasn’t limited to the piloting. She was extremely well versed on the geopolitical nuances of the entire China-Burma region in the aftermath of World War II, and this lecture had quickly gone over my head.

I was seeing with fresh eyes how incredibly knowledgeable she was about foreign policy, strategic alliances, Khrushchev’s rise to power, and postwar Chinese power struggles. As she went into all this detail, I was less following the history lesson and more becoming fascinated by how deeply invested she was in world affairs. I was also wondering if she was losing her heavy Oklahoma accent, since she was now speaking much more academically.

As she was ticking through a series of Chinese Cold War leaders, I was really getting lost in time and space. I’d spent the last two years studying Cuba, not China, and it was as if I’d studied for the wrong final exam. My ear caught a bit of her last comment, and I asked her to bring me up to speed on a reference she’d just made. “Now, Chiang Kai-Shek—were we for him or against him?”

The way her face dropped, I knew that I’d screwed up. What followed, I can only say, made me feel like a private who’d asked the general a stupid question and was getting a dressing-down at the map. In my defense, that question wasn’t as dumb as it sounded, and having looked it up upon my return, I came to understand that America’s relationship to Chiang Kai-Shek was indeed complex. However, what was much more interesting was how Jerrie Cobb was now treating me.

All of a sudden, Jerrie, a high school truant and college dropout, was treating me, a graduate from an excellent liberal arts college, as if I were insufficiently educated. She burst into a dissertation on the aftermath of Hitler’s fall, stem-winding into the genesis of the Cold War, and pointing out regions of Berlin, wrapping up with the insult, “The Berlin Wall—you’ve heard of that one, haven’t you?”

I may have flunked China-Burma, but I sure was getting a ton of information. I reminded Jerrie that I was a filmmaker, not an expert in foreign affairs, and I was capable of studying up, as filmmakers typically do when they approach a story. While I hadn’t planned on asking her many questions, I couldn’t help asking, while we were at the map, if she’d traveled to every single continent. She said she had been to all the continents, so I pointed to Antarctica. She nodded, and I asked how she’d gotten there.

 J: On a Russian spy ship.

M: How did you get aboard a Russian spy ship?

 J: Through Canada. I went with a company that worked out of Ontario. They sent me down to Argentina, to the lowest part of South America. There I got aboard the Russian ship, and we sailed to Antarctica.

M: How did you know it was a Russian spy ship?

 J: Because they were pulling another smaller boat, an ice breaker, in back of them, and between the two ships was a cable that was strung taut between them. The purpose of the cable was to intercept transmissions from our communications. I met a great friend on the boat, a Russian lady. She was a doctor, and I was teaching her English. We stopped one day, and she got out on the ice. There were penguins playing, and she just dove into the water in her underwear. She thought it was refreshing. I guess they don’t mind the cold.

M: Do you remember when this was?

 J: Not long after Khrushchev came to power.

Well, that sure was a different type of story than what I had gotten in our space discussions, but Jerrie was always adamant that the space story was boring and the rest of her life was much more interesting. Was this a soft reveal of her true vocation?

Leaving the map, we moved into the guest room, where she invited me to stay overnight. I’d always stayed in hotels, as I was doing this time, so this invitation was a breakthrough. She pointed to several boxes on the bedroom floor filled with memorabilia that she was soon getting rid of. The boxes were bulging with vintage blue file folders stamped Secret and Confidential, holding documents that looked like they “should probably be in a vault.” She pulled one out and flipped through it casually. All I could read were the red classification warnings atop each page. I sensed I was being tested, and since my original plan had been to make no sudden moves, I played it cool. I declined her invitation to stay in this room, and didn’t ask what was in the files.

As we wrapped up our first day together, she brought up the topic of me resuming her story and asked what I would do differently if I were to reapproach it. I said maybe we could talk more about the things in her life that she felt were more interesting than the space story, but I was noncommittal. As she walked me to my car with the plan of meeting the next morning, I sensed she hadn’t yet gotten what she wanted from this visit.

 J: I want to get to know you better. What do you like to do for fun?

M: When I go on a vacation, I like to visit the National Parks. I enjoy seeing wildlife.

 J: Okay. Tomorrow we’ll go see the manatees. Be here at oh-eight hundred.

As always, Jerrie spoke in units of military time.

DAY TWO: THE MANATEES

The manatees in Florida waters seek warmth in the winter months, so they migrate to hot springs and power plants to bask in the toasty flow. Each year the same peaceable mammals return to their favorite spots. Tampa Electric constructed a viewing platform beside its power plant, complete with pictures of the regulars and their descriptions so children could try to sight them. Individual manatees are often identified by their scars, acquired through accidents with boat propellers that cut distinctive markings onto their backs. Each manatee has its unique scarring pattern, which can be spotted through the murky water.

As we walked up the wooden stairs to the viewing platform, I noticed that the steps weren’t a snap for Jerrie anymore, at her stated age of eighty-one. The entryway was decorated with life-size cartoons of the manatees, drawn to scale and featuring their names. One of the manatees’ names was an alias that I suspected June Cobb had used, so I stopped in front of that one and asked Jerrie which was her favorite. She ignored me and kept walking.

For the first time, she asked me some in-depth questions about my life, my loves, and my career. I answered honestly, even though I had no idea if that was wise. She suggested, as she had many times, that she felt we had been brought together for a reason. I too had always felt that way and restated it, but there was now a lot I was not saying. Those unstated things included that I was unsure who she was, whether I was in any danger, and what dark deeds she might have done.

Whatever her past was, she knew everything, while I was in the dark, although gradually being enlightened. The Jerrie Cobb I knew before was but the first refracted light. Would she let me see more now, and if she did, then what?

This trip was full of firsts. We sat down and ate together. There was a tiny snack bar overlooking the power plant and the few manatees that arrived on this mild November day. She ordered coffee, black, and we shared a plate of fries. As we wandered back for a final look at the manatees, we sidled up to the railing and leaned in, on our elbows, tilting forward for a better view into the dark waters below.

And there it was. Jerrie had never before worn a T-shirt in my presence. She’d always worn long sleeves. Today she wore short sleeves, and as we looked down past the railing, my eyes were as close as they could be to her scar. It was on her left forearm, as big as life—the giant, unmistakable shape of a 2.

It was six inches long or bigger and far more injurious than the one pictured in Southworth’s article about Taaffe. In the corner of the 2, the scar was particularly brutal. There was a spider-like series of cracks where the skin had been ripped open, perhaps when the knife had made its turn, or when someone had twisted it into her elbow to torture her. We stood there a long time, and I was able to memorize it. I looked for the 6, which should have been beside it, but could see only a reddish patch that might have been the 6 or not. But the 2 was large, perfect, and distinctive. Was she letting me see it on purpose now?

When we got back to her rancher and assumed our positions in the carport, she had more purpose to her queries, and it didn’t take long to get to what was really on her mind. She asked me point-blank if I was “satisfied” with her answer that she wasn’t June Cobb. She told me she didn’t think I was “satisfied.” A frustration had been brewing with her all morning, and I think she was hoping I would bring it up. I hadn’t. Now, with my departure imminent, she had to show her cards. It was interesting that she was pressing me on two fronts—whether I still wanted to tell her story, and whether I believed she was who she said she was. She again preemptively stated her position: “I am not that Cobb woman, the woman in the CIA.”

I told her that her observation about me not being fully satisfied was correct. I said I now knew a whole lot more about secret work than I had when we first met. I explained that I previously had a naïve view of NASA, perhaps because my experience of it was imprinted as a child—

She cut me off. Did I think she was this other woman, the CIA agent?

I continued at my own pace, despite her rising anger. I explained that I always valued what she had to say, but clearly, if she’d done secret work, she couldn’t tell me that. I now understood that she’d been in a secret program, and once you touch those kinds of programs, all bets are off. NASA wasn’t just about space, as I had thought as a child. It was a partner in the military-industrial complex, working to win the Cold War, and a lot more was going on than meets the eye.

“Yes,” she said, “there were secret programs at NASA, and I had a top-secret clearance.” But did I think she was this other woman?

I continued. Because she’d touched that secret program the way she had, and because I now knew a whole lot more about how all that worked, for those reasons, among others, I would not be, and could never be, one hundred percent satisfied with her denials about being June Cobb.

And with that, her eyes teared up, just as they had in our conversation about Redbird. Her tension and anger faded as she recomposed herself in the carport.

Relieved, I must have smiled back.

“You’re looking at me with that knowing smile,” she said.

I’d expected an explosion, and instead, she’d softened. She explained that she’s a very private person, and that there are many things in her life that she can never talk about. She told me that I knew her better than almost anyone ever had, and that she doesn’t talk to anyone. She again, just as she’d done in Newark, said that she loved me, but more important, she added that she liked me. She told me she believes that liking someone is even more important, in some ways, than loving them.

And she now wanted to know if I still liked her.

FOUR

Elena Garro

4.1 THE CORE

When you set out to discover who someone really is, that process raises several questions: First, the question of who they really are as an individual—who their parents were and where they were born. Then the question of what they did—their successes and failures and what actions they took. Finally, the question of who they are at their core, a measure of their character, their integrity.

I was aware that June Cobb existed only because thousands of pages about her had been released as a part of the JFK assassination investigation. Why were documents about June ever released in the first place? Namely, because she intersected with the events surrounding Kennedy’s death in a major episode that precipitated the release of her file.

The Story of June Cobb and Elena Garro

After June was suspected of spying in Cuba and could no longer return, the CIA transferred her to Mexico City, where she began reporting to the agency on the leftist intellectual community there. Her deployment to Mexico lasted from June 1961 to July 1966, with the Kennedy assassination occurring in the middle of her tenure. The incident that brought her to the attention of investigators happened a year after the assassination, upon the release of the Warren Report in 1964.

The report was intended to be the final word on the crime and focused heavily on the biography and movements of Lee Harvey Oswald, the presumed assassin. In its report, the Warren Commission concluded, unequivocally, that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone in the planning and execution in broad daylight of President Kennedy. Unfortunately, the report avoided exploring any implication that Oswald had help with the dark deed, in part because the CIA and the FBI were less than fully forthcoming. What the report did do rather well was trace Oswald’s perplexing movements in the months prior to the killing. His most mysterious expedition was a trip he took to Mexico City two months before the assassination.

In late September 1963, Oswald traveled to Mexico City for several days to try to obtain a travel permit so he could move his family back to the Soviet Union. In order to get a visa, he contacted both the Cuban and the Soviet embassies, but poor preparation and his surly demeanor resulted in his being turned away. The report characterized his journey as a lone venture. Oswald had been there just to get a visa, and when that failed, he returned home alone.

The problem is, a witness saw Oswald in Mexico City, and he wasn’t by himself.

Elena Garro, a respected author who was well known in Latin American intellectual circles, had assumed the Warren Report would explain all that she had seen in the weeks leading up to the assassination. It didn’t. Shocked by the omission, she attempted to reach U.S. authorities, but before she was able to, she was visited by none other than June Cobb.

That visit went poorly. Very poorly. June pressured Garro to report her Oswald information through meetings that Cobb offered to arrange with the CIA’s Mexico City station chief or the U.S. authorities in Texas. Garro didn’t follow Cobb’s prescription and instead tried to speak to Robert Kennedy when he arrived at a local airport. Garro failed to reach him, but upon her return home, discovered someone had broken her cat’s legs and smashed its ribs while she was away, and concluded the perpetrator could only have been Cobb. This incident was what precipitated congressional investigators’ interest in Cobb in 1978, and it is why June, along with Elena Garro, became one of the most sought-after witnesses in the investigation conducted by the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

In Newark, I had briefly brought up the cat-maiming incident to Jerrie, but in all honesty, I hadn’t yet synthesized its implications. Internally, the CIA wrote off the accusation by circulating the assessment that Elena Garro was “nuts.” But if Garro’s story was true, and June had maimed her cat in an attempt to control her, then June Cobb was a monster. There was no middle ground.

Understanding this incident became one of my highest priorities. It was what put June Cobb under scrutiny in the 1978 congressional investigations, and it spoke to her character. Who was the woman called June Cobb at the heart of this story? Fortuna Calvo-Roth had identified Jerrie as the June Cobb she knew, but who was the woman Elena Garro knew as June Cobb? Had June threatened a witness in the JFK assassination investigation, or hadn’t she? And who was this woman at her core?

Many of the answers I was looking for seemed to be tied up in this story. So in order to get to know June Cobb and her “twin sister in aviation,” I had to first get to know and assess the credibility of Elena Garro.

4.2 THE UNWELCOME WITNESS: GARRO AND MEXICO CITY’S LITERARY SCENE

Elena Garro was a truly brilliant and eccentric woman who married her equal, Octavio Paz, a Mexican author and diplomat who would go on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1990. Considered to be an important writer herself, Elena was a central fixture in Mexico City’s thriving cultural scene, moving in 1963 among numerous significant political and cultural figures.

Garro’s memorabilia, which I spent several days with at Princeton’s library, tells her story in intimate ways: In family snapshots that show Elena taking in a cityscape with her good friend Pablo Picasso. In gossipy cards and letters from her friends, most of whom were fellow authors and artists. In boxes of meticulous notebooks chock full of historical facts, for a story she was researching on the Soviet Union. I spent time with her things in an effort to take her measure, and impressions tumbled from the boxes with each letter, manuscript, and photograph I held.

Her world in Mexico City had been a vibrant one, and she inhaled it with the abandon of a chain smoker, surrounded by ashtrays filled from impassioned conversations the night before. At any given time, a cat might be perched on her bookshelf or kitchen counter. She was a staunch anticommunist rabble-rouser, with a cutting insult at the ready, who easily made mincemeat of weaker minds. Her only child and namesake, Elenita, meaning “little Elena,” was her constant companion and best friend. Elena Garro was pulsingly alive, a semiprecious gemstone with myriad facets, and she was many things to many people. But she did not strike me as nuts.

Elena found herself tangled in Mexico City’s sticky web of espionage, an ecosystem that nourished Cobb but proved toxic for Garro. Battlegrounds for spying were often in neighboring countries that gave access to Cold War combatants from both sides. Places like Mexico City offered spies a chance to mix it up with the opposing force. Communist thought was much more active here, with literary publications featuring multiple viewpoints, and the intellectual class debating which course of action, democracy or communism, should prevail in Latin America. In this milieu, the KGB and the CIA could do battle, which explains why the agency had one of its largest foreign stations in Mexico City at the time.

Garro traveled in the circles that interested the CIA most—the writers, publishers, and professors who were driving opinions in this philosophical war. June Cobb’s job was to spy on this set, but she also resented them. Cobb told one CIA officer that Mexican literary figures were mostly low-caliber “pygmies,” and she later wrote an essay describing her revulsion at arriving in Mexico City, assigned to surveil the “unwashed exiles.” She felt she was capable of circulating with political leaders of the highest echelon and considered lesser assignments a chore. These were the circumstances under which Garro and Cobb came to intersect.

What Garro Saw: The Oswald Party, Late Summer/Early Fall 1963

Two to three months before the Kennedy assassination, Garro, her daughter, Elenita, and her sister Deba attended a twist-style dance party at her cousin’s home. Many of Garro’s extended family members were there, including Silvia Duran, Garro’s cousin by marriage; Duran was the staffer who had waited on Oswald at the Cuban embassy when he came in to get a visa. According to the Garro women, Oswald was at this party as a guest of Silvia Duran’s. Garro and her daughter were so certain they saw Oswald at this party that they would talk about the incident for years, in spite of the tremendous backlash they encountered.

That evening Garro and Elenita wanted to be introduced to Oswald, but they sensed that Silvia steered them away from meeting him. That behavior struck Garro as suspicious. Oswald wasn’t alone at the event, but stayed closely huddled with two young American men. The next day Elena and her daughter saw Oswald walking down a street with the same two American companions. During the party, Silvia had told Garro that Oswald was leaving early the next morning, but now that didn’t seem to be the case.

Garro was never sure of the exact date of the party, which could have been as early as the first few days of September, or as late as the end of the month. Like any party in Mexico City in that era, the event was attended by numerous communists, one of whom was Silvia Duran, who was employed by the Cuban government.

The Implications of What Garro Saw

That the presumed assassin of the president of the United States socialized with a group of communists prior to the killing directly conflicts with the Warren Report. That Silvia Duran, an employee of the Cuban government, escorted him to the party is even worse. Not only was Silvia a communist, she worked at the installation that housed the Cuban intelligence services. That puts Oswald in far too much contact with Cuban officials and would raise suspicion that he could have been acting on Castro’s behalf in killing President Kennedy.

Garro also saw Oswald with the two American men, not once but twice. This raises the possibility that he met up with companions in Mexico, contradicting the idea of a lone trip to get a visa. The other issue Garro’s story raises stems from the wide range of possible dates for the party. If Oswald was in Mexico City before his known trip in late September, it would mean he traveled there more than once, raising the specter of ongoing help coordinating the assassination.

Everything Garro saw called into question key assumptions underpinning the lone assassin theory, and her story should have triggered an investigation. But there was no proper follow-up on what Elena Garro had seen and never would be. She even had trouble getting the American authorities to take her seriously. Perhaps that’s because the FBI was weary from chasing thousands of leads during the assassination investigation and was eager to accept the simple conclusions in the Warren Report. Or perhaps it’s because the first American who arrived at Garro’s door to discuss the Oswald sighting was CIA agent June Cobb.

4.3 THE CAT-LEG-BREAK INCIDENT

A number of scholars have evaluated Garro’s Oswald sighting, but always through the lens of Was Oswald in contact with collaborators in Mexico City, or wasn’t he? I was looking at the episode and asking, Was June Cobb harassing a Kennedy assassination witness, or wasn’t she?

The idea that I could be dealing with the real June Cobb gave me the motivation to do a very thorough review. The story of what happened between Cobb and Garro must be pieced together from a medley of sources, including Cobb’s CIA memo about the incident, Cobb’s interview with John Newman, Garro’s FBI reports, and numerous CIA-instigated probes of Garro’s views. From those sources, I was able to create a narrative reconstruction that placed weight on Elena Garro’s version of events.

Elena Garro’s Story

By the time June Cobb arrived on her doorstep in the fall of 1964, Garro already knew there were forces in play in Mexico City that would do her harm if she spoke in the wrong quarters about Oswald. After Elena heard about Kennedy’s killing, she and Elenita had gone to the Cuban embassy on November 23 and yelled “assassins” at the communists, whom she already suspected had links to Oswald. Later that day Manuel Calvillo, a trusted friend, whisked her to a hotel, saying it was for her own safety.

Calvillo also shared with Garro some news that was not yet public: that her cousin, Silvia Duran, who worked at the Cuban embassy, had just been arrested. It’s also likely that Calvillo explained that Silvia was arrested for her proximity to Oswald. While sheltering at the hotel, Garro recognized Oswald on the news and wanted to tell the FBI that she’d seen Oswald at a party with numerous communists, including with Silvia.

Calvillo warned her never to report that information to the FBI at the U.S. embassy because there were communist spies there who would know she was the source. Garro followed Calvillo’s advice, and for the next ten months, she maintained her silence, as he instructed. But she cared deeply about the Kennedys and the causes they championed. When the Warren Report was finally released, Garro assumed it would explain all that she’d seen, in spite of her silence. Garro had long concluded that Oswald had links to the communists she’d seen him with and expected that a thorough investigation would have concluded much the same.

Cobb Visits Garro, October 2–4, 1964

June Cobb knocked on Garro’s door just as the Warren Report was hitting the news. She’d briefly rented Garro’s spare room and stayed “several days” according to Garro, even though the agency provided Cobb with a furnished pied-à-terre in Mexico City. Cobb orchestrated that stay through their mutual friend Eunice Odio, a talented poet and another person in Garro’s orbit who was a longtime CIA asset.

With the Warren Report as her impetus and liquor as the lubricant, Cobb got Elena and her sister, Deba, into conversations about Oswald and found out exactly what they knew. Cobb then ran to the CIA station and laid it all out in a memo. It was the only memo June drafted in her five years in Mexico City, and the only one I’ve ever seen where she hid behind her agency pseudonym, Joyce Pineinch.

But here’s what Cobb didn’t put in her memo. By the time June got her talking, Garro was hell-bent on reaching the U.S. authorities but was still wary of approaching the embassy. That’s why she came up with an alternate plan. She had heard that Robert Kennedy was flying into Mexico City that weekend, so Elena was going to show up at the airport, make her way through the crowd with a bouquet, and try to speak to Kennedy about Oswald. She trusted RFK’s integrity and thought approaching him directly would inoculate her from harm.

But Cobb had other ideas. Suddenly June unmasked herself and told Garro she was a CIA agent. With that as her badge, she echoed Calvillo’s advice, that Garro should continue avoiding the U.S. embassy. Instead, she suggested that Elena travel to Texas, where June would put her in touch with the proper authorities. Garro didn’t bite. June then offered to arrange a meeting at a quiet café with Win Scott, the CIA station chief in Mexico City. Once again Garro demurred. Garro now thought Cobb was planted on her and had no intention of following her anywhere.

That night Garro left the group to try to intercept Kennedy, while Cobb stayed back in the spare room, claiming to be sick. When Garro returned, having failed to see RFK, she discovered her cat’s legs were broken and its ribs smashed. She concluded the perpetrator could only have been Cobb. Distraught, she pulled an all-nighter, discussing the predicament with Elenita and Deba, and she threw Cobb out of her home the next morning.

Cobb Writes a Memo About What Garro Knew, October 5, 1964

June made a beeline to the CIA station and penned a detailed memo about what the Garro women were saying. It isn’t hard to figure out what Cobb wanted to emphasize since she shouted that part out in capital letters.

And Oswald Was There With Two Other Beatnik Looking Boys, One of Whom Was Very Tall and All Three of Whom They Remember Quite Well

In the rest of the memo, Cobb tells of how suspicious the Garro women now were of the Durans, especially of Silvia. Garro knew the whole bunch had recently come into money and traveled to Texas. Cobb said Garro was so “sickened” by them, she’d completely cut off her relationship with her cousins.

You would think the FBI would be eager to hear all the information in Cobb’s explosive memo. So did the CIA station chief walk it across the hall and share it with the FBI next door? No. At least not in any way that left a paper trail. Did the station at least relay Cobb’s news that Oswald had cavorted with communists to CIA headquarters? No, again. Instead, Cobb’s memo was stuffed in a drawer and wouldn’t resurface for over a year.

If Garro hadn’t mustered her courage, it might never have seen the light of day. But six weeks later, an emboldened Garro went to her book broker’s office and had him call the U.S. embassy as her witness and middleman. The FBI then dispatched an agent to the broker’s office, where Garro was officially interviewed for the first time.

The FBI’s Report Omits the Key Facts, November 23, 1964

Special Agent Rolf Larson’s report on his November 17 interview with Garro starts out by saying Elena was “extremely fearful in contacting the U.S. embassy” because she’d experienced many strange things. But he then failed to enumerate what those strange happenings were. The report does say that Garro saw Oswald at a party but makes no mention that:

Garro saw Oswald with two American men.

Silvia Duran knew Oswald and invited him to the party.

Silvia told Garro that Oswald was leaving the next morning.

Garro spotted Oswald with the American men again the next day.

After omitting every concerning connection that Oswald had made in Mexico City, Larson’s report placed the date of the party during Oswald’s known visit. He wrote up his memorandum six days after he’d interviewed Elena Garro.

The CIA Station Sends a Man to Probe Garro, November 24, 1964

A week after speaking to Larson, Garro received another visit from her friend Manuel Calvillo. What neither of them knew was that Calvillo had been sent by the CIA station. Calvillo was in the dark because he thought he was getting information for his literary financier, Al Wichtrich, an American businessman. Calvillo didn’t know that Wichtrich answered directly to Win Scott, the station chief, and that the funding Calvillo received for his writing career came from a CIA propaganda division.

Since Calvillo didn’t know the CIA had sent him, Garro would never suspect it either. This is a classic intelligence “cutout” arrangement, and was how the agency probed and manipulated Garro while remaining invisible.

Keep in mind, the United States had every reason to interview Garro openly, which was what Elena Garro wanted. After all, she’d just come forward to the FBI with radioactive information about Oswald. But this probe was covert because the information the CIA was after was not about Oswald. The resulting report’s focus is spelled out in its title.

MEMORANDUM FOR THE FILES—Subject: June Cobb.

The Cat-Leg-Break Document, November 24, 1964

I’ve dubbed this memo “The Cat-Leg-Break Document” because the entire report is all about June Cobb’s threatening behavior and what Garro was now saying about Cobb. It was written by the station chief, Win Scott, himself and was based on the probe conducted by Calvillo.

The first paragraphs go into how Garro believed Cobb had attacked her cat and smashed its ribs, and that she was “afraid June Cobb will break her arms and legs one day if she gets angry.” The report then details Garro’s failed effort to reach Kennedy and mentions Oswald only in that context. The memo ends with Garro’s recent visit to the U.S. authorities, where a U.S. embassy officer who claimed to be representing the Warren Commisssion told her that “she should be afraid of June Cobb.” We can add that to the list of topics that didn’t make it into the FBI’s report.

This entire memo is the station chief running damage control on June Cobb, who went off the rails and threatened a witness. But Garro still assumed the Americans wanted to hear about Oswald. Feeling like she hadn’t been heard when she spoke to Larson on November 17, Elena started planning her second approach to the FBI.

4.4 THE FBI “FIXES” THE PARTY DATE

Garro’s second interview with the FBI, on November 24, didn’t go much better than the first. A week after speaking to the FBI agent at the bookseller’s office, Garro mustered the courage to appear at the U.S. embassy for a longer conversation with two FBI officers. This time she arrived armed with support materials to help reconstruct when the party was. Obviously, despite what Larson reported, she wasn’t sure whether the party had been in late September, when Oswald was known to have been in town.

Garro brought with her a postmarked letter stamped September 2, 1963, because Elenita had danced with a young man at the party who sent her the letter afterward. Elenita came along to corroborate that story. The U.S. authorities now had two witnesses who saw Oswald at the gathering, with a dated document indicating the party was before September 2, none of which fit with the Warren Commission’s conclusions.

The agents immediately confronted Garro that the postmark was dated long before Oswald made his well-documented trip to Mexico City. Her defensive reply, that communists had the ability to falsify a postmark, was used to discredit her. Sadly, that kicked off a long paper trail impugning Garro while avoiding the investigative follow-up that could have corroborated her story. The agents then initiated a strange reconnaissance mission to “fix the date” of the party—their words for it—and from that point forward, their main concern appears to have been nailing down the party date to Oswald’s known trip.

Had FBI agents really wanted to “fix the date,” they could have interviewed Garro’s sister, Deba, who also saw Oswald at the party, or Ruban Duran, who hosted the party at his home. Or they could have made a comprehensive list of everyone Garro said was at the party and interviewed them. Or reinterviewed Silvia Duran. Or looked for the two men whom Oswald was with. Or individually interviewed Elenita, who was backing up Garro’s account. But none of that was ever done.

The cumulative effect was that Garro was left as a singular witness, and as such, she was vulnerable to attacks on her credibility.

A Young Man’s Fuzzy Memory Trumps the Garro Women

The bureau did seek out the young man Elenita danced with, but the FBI didn’t even bother to ask when he sent the letter that would have proven the party’s date. Instead, the man’s fuzzy recollection of having attended two similar parties where he didn’t see Oswald trumped the witnessing of Elena, Elenita, and their postmark. The FBI’s final report to headquarters on December 11, 1964, struck a tone of finality, dismissing Garro’s evidence and placing the party during Oswald’s known visit.

But suddenly, in that summary report, the FBI started claiming something new: that Garro and her daughter had both failed to consistently identify Lee Harvey Oswald when presented with his photo. The agent who interviewed Garro at the U.S. embassy didn’t include that important detail in his twelve pages of notes from the original interview. Garro was then described as “somewhat bohemian,” “rambling,” “acquainted” with numerous leftists, and a person who “might not be completely stable,” in the cover letter sent to FBI headquarters. The bureau never again lifted a finger to look into Oswald’s communist ties in Mexico or into Elena Garro’s claims.

Garro Finds a Champion, December 1965

A full year after the FBI gave her the bum’s rush, Garro ran into Charles Thomas, a political officer from the U.S. embassy, and told him the same story she’d been repeating for several years. Thomas resonated with intellectuals like Garro. He respected her as a person and an artist and disagreed with the characterization of her as unstable. His encounter with Garro set him on a fateful trajectory.

Thomas authored a detailed memo about what Garro had told him, and his version was quite different from that of the FBI. It turned out that Garro could name plenty of people who attended the party, all of whom would have been ripe for follow-up or corroboration. Thomas also reported for the first time that after the assassination, Calvillo had sequestered Garro and warned her never to go to the U.S. embassy. This memo is full of new revelations and sits in stark contrast to the FBI’s reports.

The Mexico City station was now compelled to take action and sent Thomas out to interview Garro a second time. Clearly, the CIA had its own interest in what Garro was saying, independent of the FBI’s investigation.

Thomas fulfilled the assignment by inviting Elena and Elenita to his home for Christmas and, that night, drafted the most comprehensive version of Garro’s story to make it into the record. What he documented, and the FBI omitted, was the campaign of coercion to silence Garro that began immediately in the wake of the assassination. Much of what I have written in this chapter, I pulled from Thomas’s reports.

The CIA’s Mexico City station was now forced to alert Langley that Garro had seen Oswald with communists, a full year after they had mothballed Cobb’s memo with similar information. But the station couldn’t let Garro’s witnessing stand uncontested, so they followed up with another cable stating that the FBI couldn’t substantiate Garro’s claims. And in case we are wondering who was undermining Garro, a routing slip attached to that cable gives us some insight:

Allen White (deputy chief): I don’t know what the FBI did in ’64, but the Garros have been talking about this for a long time and she is said to be extremely bright.

Win Scott (station chief): She is also nuts.

The station chief had been whispering much the same to the bureau, but now he’d been forced to put it in writing.

Lo and behold, in two short years, Scott’s assessment of Garro would radically change. On a new matter involving Mexico’s intellectual community in 1967, the chief would highlight Garro’s observations and then disseminate them to numerous U.S. government agencies without disparaging her in the slightest. Win Scott’s concern about Garro’s stability was situational to the information she was imparting. It was her word about Oswald and June Cobb that was unwelcome.

Tragedy Befalls Charles Thomas

Charles Thomas killed himself in 1971, six years after penning the two Garro memos. His career had stalled, and he had been pushed out of the State Department and given no pension. The official story was that he’d simply been “selected out” for failing to achieve a promotion, and that his downfall had nothing to do with his memos on Garro. However, even as he was being forced out of service, Elena Garro was still on his mind. His parting letter on July 25, 1969, to his superiors was a warning:

If [the Garro allegations] were ever made public, those who have tried to discredit the Warren Report would have a field day in speculating about their implications. The credibility of the Warren Report would be damaged all the more if it were learned that these allegations were known and never adequately investigated by the competent American authorities…. On the basis of the facts I have presented, I believe, on balance, the matter deserves further investigation.

Thomas’s letter set off administrative reverberations and cascaded into a series of documents to address his complaints. What didn’t result was a deeper investigation into Oswald’s dealings in Mexico City. The penultimate conclusion came down from on high when James Angleton, June Cobb’s boss in her counterintelligence work, personally halted the inquiry in 1969.

Tragedy struck so many who touched the Garro story. Thomas pulled out a shotgun and killed himself in his study in 1971. In 1974, Elena Garro no longer felt safe in Mexico City and left for the United States, seeking political asylum. As she awaited passage from New York to Spain, she got word of another disaster. Eunice Odio, the poet who’d recommended Cobb as her renter, had been found dead at age fifty-four in her own bathtub in Mexico City. And ten years after the brutal attack on her cat, Elena Garro’s torment at the hands of June Cobb was still ongoing.

4.5 ELENA’S OWN WORDS

At long last, we can listen to Elena Garro tell us about June Cobb with no CIA filter. While I was reviewing Garro’s memorabilia at Princeton, I kept my eyes peeled for anything that might reference June Cobb. What I found was a fragment of a letter Garro wrote that has never been published.

The setting was midtown Manhattan in May 1974. By then, a majority of Americans disbelieved the Warren Report’s lone-wolf conclusion, and a groundswell was building toward a congressional inquiry. Garro’s champion, Charles Thomas, was dead, and Elena’s life in Mexico City had become untenable due to harassment. She and her daughter were seeking political asylum in the United States after being blamed for student unrest in Mexico, yet another tragic incident with CIA overtones.

The Garros needed to find a safe place to rebuild their lives, and were staying in New York City while awaiting their asylum petition review. They would soon relocate to Madrid, where this letter was written, but Manhattan is where the story in this letter was set. Garro’s letter was written to an unknown recipient, and chronicles the strange and disturbing encounters the Garro women were still having with June Cobb. Cobb now also lived in Manhattan, having moved there after leaving her Mexico City CIA post in 1966.

This letter was translated from the original Spanish. The first page is missing, so the story begins midway.

[June] began to bring me jellies each day…. She became close to the neighbors, and one morning she had a telephone installed for me under her name. She would kiss Elenita and took me to a very strange church that showed pornographic films…. She would arrive at 8 a.m. and leave at 3 a.m.

As I sat in Princeton’s special collections reading room after discovering this letter, I could hardly believe my eyes. June Cobb was still meddling in the lives of Elena and Elenita almost a full decade after the cat-maiming incident. Garro was so concerned about these intrusions, she turned to her friend, Miguel Ocampo, an Argentinian painter working in New York, for more information about June:

“She is bad news, watch out for her,” he told me. I started to feel scared.

Garro’s letter then related how a turning point had come when a neighbor brought her a stack of “strange and desperate” letters from Eunice Odio, who was in some sort of trouble in Mexico City and was reaching out to Elena for help. Odio’s name is a familiar one in this saga because it was Odio who’d recommended that Garro rent a room to June Cobb during the fateful visit in 1964. A twenty-page document in the JFK Assassination Records would tell us more about Eunice Odio, but that file remains completely redacted.

Upon learning that Eunice was in distress, Garro, with June Cobb and Elenita in the room, picked up the phone and tried calling Odio. But when Eunice’s telephone was re-routed to the Mexico City Preventative Police, Garro became alarmed. She asked the official on the other end of the line to identify his profession, and he told her it was his job to arrest bad guys. That revelation prompted Garro to turn to June Cobb and say:

I am not an idiot…. You and Eunice are cops and are spying on me.

She wasn’t wrong, but Garro still didn’t know for whom June was working. The letter then goes on to describe the red tape the Garros were tangled in as they tried to obtain asylum in America, and how a deportation official gave the women a month-long extension to solidify their plans. That afforded the Garros a window of time to try to escape June Cobb’s clutches, and they wasted no time implementing their plan.

Quietly, I began to take my books to a friend’s house. June didn’t notice. Then, she showed up suddenly and cut off the telephone, not only with the phone company but also using a scissors. It was then that I felt I was in danger.

Garro then described a brief hiatus where June came to visit her less, and she used those days to go to the Mexican Consulate to obtain a visa so she and Elenita could escape to Madrid. But the Garros wouldn’t get out of America without one more frightful encounter with June Cobb. While she and Elenita were packing after midnight and awaiting friends who were to help them with their bags, suddenly there was a knock on the door.

I opened it, and there was June. Elenita almost fainted. We didn’t want her to see that we were packing…. “Let’s go outside,” I said to June, who was livid with that peculiar cadaver color of hers. On the stairs, she says to me, “Chica, I came to tell you that Eunice is dead….” “How did she die?” I asked. “She was found dead in her bathtub with her head bashed in,” she said, looking at me with her frog eyes. [Note: The Lopez Report says the coroner concluded that Odio died of suicide by poisoning.]

Late that night, Garro and Cobb walked the avenues of Manhattan, as Garro tried to keep Cobb away from her house. Garro asked Cobb if she was implying that Eunice had been killed because Garro hadn’t returned to Mexico City, and Cobb did nothing to dispel that assumption:

Chica, don’t feel guilty…. Let’s get a vodka.

Cobb wanted to bring Garro back to her place, but Garro demurred.

Instead, we entered a dark bar frequented by drunks. I was very frightened, but I didn’t want to lose my head…. June tried to get me drunk, but I’m not crazy, so I just kept listening to her repeat over and over how Eunice’s head had been smashed in. At 2 a.m., I decided to go back home. I avoided letting her accompany me to my door.

When Garro got back to her apartment, she learned that her friends had come to get her luggage while she was out with June. Elena and Elenita flew to Madrid the next day.

When I found this document, I felt, for the first time, as if I’d heard from Elena Garro herself. Garro was afraid of June Cobb and not because she imagined an assault on her cat. Garro was afraid of June Cobb because Cobb had cut her telephone away from the wall with a scissors; because Cobb was still monitoring her movements; because Cobb’s unwanted appearances at her apartment were threatening; because Cobb told her about the death of a friend without a whiff of compassion; and because Cobb used the news of that death to intimidate Garro. Elena Garro was afraid of June Cobb, and June Cobb sounded like a woman to fear.

Two years after Garro penned this letter, the House Select Committee on Assassinations reopened the investigation into Kennedy’s death. Elena Garro and June Cobb were among the most eagerly anticipated witnesses.

4.6 THE STAR WITNESS: CONGRESS SUMMONS GARRO, SEPTEMBER 1978

In the mid-1970s, the House Select Committee on Assassinations was formed to review the evidence in both the Kennedy and the King murders. In Kennedy’s case, the committee cast a wide net, analyzing the many lapses that had caused 81 percent of Americans to conclude that Oswald had not acted alone. Oswald’s trip to Mexico City was of keen interest, because this was his best opportunity to have contacted collaborators or foreign governments.

The committee’s focus on Mexico City hoped to remedy shortcomings in the prior investigation, including gaps in the evidentiary record and rumors that Oswald had been in contact with Mexican communists while he was there. During the summer of 1978, two young congressional staffers representing the committee, Dan Hardway and Ed Lopez, were immersed in their inquiry into Oswald’s Mexican trip. The duo were especially keen to speak with Elena Garro, who would have been their star witness since Thomas’s memos made it clear she would tell a story that was in direct conflict with the Warren Report.

Lopez eventually learned Garro was in Spain, where she picked up her mail every few weeks at the Mexican embassy in Madrid. He called that embassy, left a message, and within days Elena called him back. Lopez handwrote memos from each phone call, leaving a record of how he approached Garro and how she responded.

In their first call on September 5, 1978, Lopez invited Elena to fly to Washington for an interview, but she wanted proof he was with the official investigation. She then spelled out why she was concerned: “I would go to Washington, but I have been in trouble previously and people have harassed me since 1968.” Lopez’s memos seem rather complete, which is why it struck me that he didn’t record asking a follow-up question about the harassment. Instead, he worked to establish his legitimacy, and told Elena that he would be forwarding a letter with his credentials.

Two days later Garro phoned Lopez, asking when she would be receiving his letter. He told her it would arrive on September 11, and that he was arranging plane tickets for her and Elenita to fly to Washington on the fourteenth for an interview on the eighteenth. Then, in that same phone call, Garro reiterated her concerns:

Ms. Garro de Paz stated that she could not refuse our request, though she was afraid, because if she did there would be a black mark on her record and she did not want that [emphasis added].

When your star witness says for the second time that she is afraid, your next questions might logically be Who are you afraid of? Who is harassing you? Can we provide you with protection or assistance? If Lopez asked Garro any of those things, there is no record of it in his memos.

But Lopez should have already known quite a bit about why Garro was afraid. He’d spent the previous months reading the same reports I’ve outlined in this chapter. He had read the Cat-Leg-Break Document, which said Garro was “afraid June Cobb will break her arms and legs one day” and that a U.S. official had told Garro that she should fear June Cobb. He’d also read Thomas’s reports, which recounted that Garro had said Calvillo sequestered her in a hotel because she was in danger. He’d even seen the follow-up done by Thomas, confirming that Garro did stay at a hotel in the days after the assassination.

The phone call where Garro said she was afraid was the last one between Lopez and Garro. On September 15, 1978, he learned that she never picked up the plane tickets.

Now let’s take a look at how Lopez reported on his communications with Garro, and what he had to say about June Cobb in his final comprehensive report.

4.7 THE LOPEZ REPORT

Unfortunately, a certain predictability had crept into the sad story of Elena Garro. As the investigation concluded, Lopez, with the assistance of Hardway, wrote up an exhaustive report on Oswald’s Mexico City travels. This lengthy document, informally called the Lopez Report, devotes a full thirty pages to Garro and her sighting of Lee Harvey Oswald.

Lopez had to explain why he failed to land the interview with Garro, since it left a void in the inquiry, so his report recounted every attempt he made: his quest to reach her in Spain, the two phone calls between them, the fact that he’d sent her the plane tickets, and her failure to pick them up. It seemed the only significant fact he didn’t include was Garro’s statement that she was afraid. Sadly, this is but the first in a series of concerns I was developing about the handling of Cobb and Garro in the Lopez Report.

Paging Mrs. Sharp

The Lopez Report has been hailed by many for being the first serious presentation of evidence contradicting the Warren Report, but I was scrutinizing the document from a new angle. I was looking at how the report dealt with the encounter between Garro and Cobb, and at the efforts the investigators made to bring both women forward.

On that score, the lapse that alarmed me the most was how the normally meticulous Lopez got June Cobb’s name wrong all throughout the report—calling her “June Cobb Sharp” no fewer than a dozen times. He even renamed a CIA memorandum, mistitling it in his footnotes by inserting the name “June Cobb Sharp” instead of the document’s actual subtitle, “June Cobb.”

I suppose Lopez’s excuse might be that in a tiny handful of documents, Cobb’s name was written in Spanish with her mother’s maiden name, Sharp, tacked on at the end. But looking at Cobb’s CIA file in total, as both Lopez and I have done, you find that for every Spanish-language document that uses the name “June Cobb Sharp,” there are literally a thousand documents that say “June Cobb.” But for some reason, Lopez latched on to “Sharp” and ran with it—so much so that when the investigators tried to find her, they apparently went looking for a “June Cobb Sharp.”

FIGURE 4A. The section of the Lopez Report where Lopez describes searching for “June Cobb Sharp.” Notice that Lopez used the Spanish derivative name for Cobb, an American, while failing to do so for Calvillo, who was Mexican.

Click here to view as text.

Meanwhile, “June Cobb” was listed in the 1978 telephone directory for Manhattan—exactly where she told the CIA she was moving when she left Mexico City in 1966, and where the agency had continued to hire her on a job-by-job basis. That left Lopez with yet another no-show to explain, which he addressed with the following comment:

The CIA declined to aid the Committee in this aspect of the investigation.

Perhaps if Lopez had highlighted the documents in which Garro said she was afraid of Cobb, he might have leveraged more pressure on the agency to produce her. But nowhere in the report does he mention that Garro feared June Cobb, or that she had good reason to. He even managed to analyze the Cat-Leg-Break Document without mentioning that Garro believed her cat had been seriously injured by Cobb or that Garro was “afraid Cobb will break her arms and legs one day if she gets angry.”

I’d now found two lapses in the Lopez Report: (1) Lopez omitted Garro’s fear of June Cobb from the report, and (2) he mistakenly gave June Cobb a misleading surname. If June wanted to lie low or was hiding a “twin sister,” things were unfolding her way.

Meanwhile, on August 18, 1978, just as Lopez was seeking June Cobb and failing to find her, Dave Phillips gave the interview to Dan Hardway in Washington, D.C., where Phillips said June Cobb “flew an airplane” and had a “twin sister in aviation.”

FIGURE 4B. Snapshot of Jerrie with friends on a jungle expedition posing beside a dated inscription.

So where was Jerrie while this investigation was seeking June? She was on an expedition with friends to the Amazon jungle, where she was photographed beside her name carved into a rock with the date August 1978.

Hardway and Lopez Believe They Were Stymied by CIA Control

“We were getting cut off, pretty severely, from the major things we were looking at by someone who knew exactly where to keep us from looking,” Hardway told a reporter in 2014. Lopez and Hardway even filed a civil suit against the CIA in 2019 to release documents they felt would support their allegation that the CIA had interfered with their investigation. They lost that case, but still believe they encountered agency interference, a claim that is supported by the established fact that the CIA placed a senior agent in the role of the agency’s liaison to their investigation. That agent, George Joannides, used his role to shield from the committee his own work in 1963 with a Cuban student group that had clashed with Lee Harvey Oswald.

But I was now wondering if the interference Hardway and Lopez encountered extended into the handling of Garro and Cobb. After all, who suggested to Lopez that June Cobb went by June Cobb Sharp? Lopez and Hardway even told an audience at an Assassination Archives and Research Center Conference in 2014 that they had been told by someone during the investigation that Elena Garro was unstable. I couldn’t help but notice how that negative information matched what had been said in 1964 by CIA station chief Win Scott.

Elena Garro’s treatment from start to finish throughout her Oswald episode was tragic. The harassment began the day after the assassination and escalated with Cobb’s controlling visit and cat attack. Garro’s Oswald sighting and Cobb’s problematic behavior prompted character assaults from the senior leadership at the CIA’s Mexico City station. Charles Thomas, the only U.S. official who refused to sing from the “Garro is nuts” songbook, was pushed out of office and plunged into a suicidal depression.

As Garro fled her homeland for safety in New York, she was again terrorized by Cobb, who used the news of their friend’s mangled corpse decomposing in a bathtub to scare her. Later, the inquiry launched to hear Garro’s side sent investigators who were told she was unstable while not mentioning in their final report that she was afraid. As for June Cobb, someone gave the woman who used many names a new name to hide in.

I’d sought out what Garro had to say, and I’d heard her loud and clear. Her sighting of Oswald and the backlash it generated suggest that his Mexico City travels were not what they seemed. A whole lot of effort had been brought to bear to dismiss Elena Garro. I would not be dismissing any of this. The problem is, if you don’t dismiss the Garro story, then you must contend with all that it implies.

ACT TWO

WHAT DID SHE DO?

INTERLUDE 4

Finding the Babushka

When Jerrie and I were working together on the film, I’d installed on my office wall a long corkboard, the size of a classroom blackboard, that I used to chart out her life. Running across the top was a timeline with Jerrie’s milestones, juxtaposed with other signature moments like John Glenn’s historic flight and the rollout of the Barbie doll. Below that, I’d created a collage of my favorite pictures of Jerrie, with her windswept hair, kneeling beside her Aero Commander or climbing into the cockpit of a supersonic Delta Dagger. I remember printing the photos and pinning them to the board, imagining how we would approach the casting, costuming, and location scouting for the film.

There was so much joy and accomplishment on this board, both hers and mine. For the longest time, I kept it intact as it was. Some of my crew members were lobbying to find a way to go back and do the astronaut film anyway since it was a great story, and so much of it was corroborated. As I explained that we could never go back, a part of me also hesitated to go forward. The board hung there with the shining astronaut story on it long after June, Taaffe, and cryptonyms staged their coup upon my world. I just couldn’t bear to take it down.

It was well past time when I carefully cut out a marker for November 22, 1963, and placed the assassination of President Kennedy on the timeline of Jerrie’s life. That disastrous day was now the focus and had been for some time. Making that fact explicit felt almost like a death. It also felt like a moment of clarity and resolve.

Knowing all I had learned about June and Jerrie’s duality—including what June had done for the CIA in Cuba and in Mexico City—I couldn’t shake free from Jerrie’s confession about being at Redbird Airport on the day of the assassination. Maybe, absent everything else, Jerrie’s presence in Dallas that day could have been written off as another of the many strange coincidences that permeated the Cold War era. But by now, I couldn’t simply dismiss it.

When Jerrie told me she didn’t go into Dallas that day, I didn’t believe her. Why on earth would a group of reporters and their pilot sit out on a tarmac for hours, only to miss the scoop of the century? The part of her story that did ring true was that she’d flown in on a charter. The where and when of her stories always checked out. I also believed she was trying to make the pressured exit. I could feel her serotonin spiking across the table as she relived it, and her version perfectly matched what citizens reported seeing out at Redbird Airport.

But her story sounded more like a frantic getaway than a canceled assignment for Life magazine. My hunch was that she’d told me the cover story but omitted everything she’d done in Dallas that day.

M: So that means if you ask an agent about their life and what they did, they can’t really tell you anything.

 J: Sure, they can. They can talk about a lot of things.

M: Well, they can’t tell you about what they really did because they would be violating their secrecy agreement. I think if they do tell you anything, they could even be up for some sort of charge, like a jail sentence for telling you something classified.

 J: Yes, and they should be. But they can talk about lots of things in their life, just not what they did on operations.

So if Jerrie was on an intelligence operation that day and had gone into Dallas, how could I figure out where she had gone? Fortunately a good amount of film footage was shot on that day, especially of the president’s motorcade, and nearly all of it was accessible thanks to the world-changing news at the center of it. My only problem was, I’d have to get up the nerve to admit to myself that I needed to look for her.

I remembered seeing a documentary about the assassination called JFK: Death in Dealey Plaza, and I used that as my starting point. The film took a unique approach, in that it focused on the photographers who filmed the scene, then cut together every movie and still image of the killing, analyzing it from each angle. After poring over Jerrie’s vintage photos for the past three years, I knew her face, frame, and posture from every angle. If she was in the crowd on Dealey Plaza and someone photographed her, I was as good a person as any to recognize her, perhaps even from a distance.

I ordered that film, and when the DVD arrived, I marched up to my system and plopped it in. Writing about it feels almost as bad as doing it. Granted, it was a long shot, but it was a box I had to cross off, just in case.

The documentary opened at Love Field, the airport where Kennedy and Jackie arrived on the day of the killing. I scanned the crowd but didn’t see anyone resembling Jerrie in the cheering throng.

The crowd encircled the First Couple with outstretched hands as they walked to the convertible, but once the motorcade left the airfield, it became difficult to spot anyone in the blur. The film didn’t linger on their center-city traverse but quickly cut to the coverage as the presidential car began its zigzag route into Dealey Plaza. Suddenly, quite a few bystanders could be seen, and many from a recognizable distance. This was the visual dissection of the crime, and the narrator began scrutinizing every angle from which the president’s final seconds had been recorded. The film then zeroed in on the murder itself, and once the convertible passed the crowd, I took a deep breath. I’d been looking for a strong, blond, athletic woman with a ponytail—while praying I wouldn’t find one.

And then the female narrator, devoid of emotion, introduced a home movie of the fatal moment that had been filmed by a bystander aptly named Marie Muchmore.

Filming for just three seconds, the Muchmore footage gives us another view of the fatal shot. It also captures one other photographer whose identity has tantalized investigators for decades. This figure, known to researchers as the Babushka Lady, also clearly has a camera raised to her eyes filming the fatal shots, but incredibly, she and her footage vanished after that day, adding fuel to the conspiracy fire and tantalizing “what if” questions to our investigation.

FIGURE 4C. A still frame from the Muchmore film, moments before the fatal shot. The Babushka is in the foreground in a trench coat and headscarf.

The documentary froze on this “Babushka Lady,” who was seen from behind as the president was fatally struck right in front of her. To my eye, she appeared to be blond and athletic, and she took a powerful stance. She wore a bulky trench coat and a headscarf that partially concealed her. She was intently aiming a camera at the president, but what struck me was her stance. This woman was slightly knock-kneed. Jerrie also had a distinctly knock-kneed stance and gait, something I knew from spending time with her in person, as well as from working with the vintage photos of her.

The Babushka was confident and focused, like a journalist, while wielding a significant camera. Jerrie told me she’d arrived with the crew from Life in the charter and that they’d brought numerous cameras with them. There was even a professionalism in the way this woman held and panned her camera.

The Babushka was about thirty feet away from Kennedy when he was killed, pointing her camera directly at him at the fatal moment. She was one of the closest people to him when the bullet pierced his skull, yet she never came forward as a witness, and her footage was never found. She was nicknamed the Babushka Lady because her trench coat and headscarf suggested a Russian peasant. Several women came forward years later claiming to be the Babushka, but none of them could produce the film, and all had issues with their stories.

If a burly man had pointed a large camera, feet away, at the president when he was shot, then walked off, never to be heard from again and his footage never found, wouldn’t he have quickly become a person of interest in the investigation? Had the Babushka evaded greater scrutiny because she was a woman?

I had gone looking for Jerrie in the crowd, and what I found was a placeholder, a blank slate, who’s been called the greatest mystery of all time. Even though the Babushka was aiming her camera at the president in the final moment he was whole, she’s universally believed to be a benign mystery, a bystander with an incredible view of history, who captured it and then disappeared. It hadn’t occurred to anyone that she could possibly be more.

Unfortunately, that idea had now occurred to me.

FIVE

QJWIN

5.1 THE MOST MYSTERIOUS CIA AGENT OF ALL TIME

If you spend enough time perusing the JFK Assassination Records, you will inevitably stumble upon one of the CIA’s biggest mysteries: the assassination-orchestrating agent code-named QJWIN. It’s no surprise that the agency’s darkest deeds would be their most shrouded. The CIA’s nascent assassination program targeting foreign leaders and the communications about it are woven throughout the JFK files.

The key tenet to any covert action conducted on enemy soil is deniability. To openly attack another country, its citizens, or its leadership without the crucial element of disguise is akin to committing an act of war. And while modern U.S. intelligence was born with the OSS during World War II, its successor, the CIA, was not in the business of waging overt wars. The Ivy League blue-bloods who ran the fledgling agency firmly believed they were in the business of preventing them.

America’s invention and its use of two nuclear weapons, followed by the Soviet Union matching that capability, drove a hot war between the superpowers underground while a covert Cold War became the new battlefield. On these front lines, success was measured not just by the megatons of your bomb—in intelligence circles, it was measured by the magnificence of your disguise. The greater the damage a superpower could inflict without leaving a fingerprint, the more power it could wield, or so they believed.

It was in this atmosphere that the United States anointed a new agent, one whose sole purpose was to ensure that America would have that crucial measure of distance from its worst deeds. This person’s prized feature was their invisibility, a gift bestowed through the construction and maintenance of a complex cloaking mechanism surrounding the agent, both on the ground and within the files. The new agent was needed because America’s leaders were pondering a novel calculus—that the murder of a single communist leader, if done untraceably, could short-circuit the alternative: a hot war that would end civilization.

America’s Assassination Program and QJWIN, Its Star Agent

The stories about America’s assassination program, as told by the CIA officers who conceived and constructed it, vary like an incremental confession. Ethical concerns about the program have lingered, along with worries about the potential for its abuse, which is why documents pertaining to it reside within the JFK Assassination Records Collection. The program’s central figure, recruited into the first deadly assignment in the fall of 1960, was the only dedicated assassin the CIA ever admitted it employed. QJWIN was the cryptonym assigned to the spy who was the harbinger of death on behalf of America.

While QJWIN has been called an assassin, it would be more accurate to describe them as an assassin recruiter, a roving asset who enlisted others to help orchestrate the demise of enemy leaders. As we have seen, agents can have more than one cryptonym, with each limited to a specific region or assignment. In the case of QJWIN, a careful timelining of every written use of this code name on real-time CIA documents revealed that this agent was actively working on projects from October 1960 until March 1964. These were also the peak years for June Cobb’s spying and for Jerrie’s pursuit of an astronautical career at NASA.

According to the Church Committee’s Interim Report in 1975, there were two leaders whom U.S. officials directly plotted to assassinate: Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Patrice Lumumba of the Congo. It was the need to eliminate these leaders that led to the anointment of QJWIN as the central agent in the assassination program. But a senior CIA officer told the inspector general in 1967 that while QJWIN was “contemplated” for the use “in such an activity,” meaning Lumumba’s demise, that plan never came to fruition. QJWIN’s use against Castro is also denied, since the documentary trail shows the agent spent most of their time on fruitless assignments over in Europe.

Assassination operations are designed to be deniable, so mechanisms to ascribe blame elsewhere must be baked into the design. As one might expect, the CIA’s leadership consistently claimed to congressional inquiries that no foreign leader was ever assassinated by the United States. Castro died an old man, but Lumumba was murdered shortly after QJWIN left the Congo, after a mission for the agency to secure that very outcome.

Of course, since this program was designed to deny its own successes, had QJWIN eliminated a leader, the story told in the files might look much as it does today. Almost everything about this secret operation remains opaque even after numerous investigations intended to bring clarity to it. We still don’t know what the QJ stands for, but the last part of the code name, WIN, betrays a bit of optimism. The person who named the agent at the program’s inception expected good things for America as a result.

June, Jerrie, and QJWIN

I didn’t relish the idea of investigating spy-lady Cobb’s proximity to the assassination program, but the synchronicities kept rearing their heads. The most troubling parallel was that the program’s number-one target, Fidel Castro, was also June Cobb’s and Catherine Taaffe’s number-one target, and he was a leader to whom they had remarkable access. Furthermore, as we will see, June worked closely with the assassin whom the agency mobilized to poison Castro. But I was also unsettled by Jerrie’s junket through the Congo during the political rise of the program’s other target, Patrice Lumumba. Two leaders had been approved by the United States for covert assassination, and I could place either June Cobb or her aviating “twin sister” in proximity to both.

Those disconcerting facts, coupled with June’s harassment of a JFK witness and Jerrie’s positioning on the day of his murder, led to my decision to compare the movements of June and her alters to QJWIN’s program. Since I’ve devoted a chapter to the topic, you’ve probably surmised that I think I’ve found something, and you would be right.

This book not only devotes Chapter 5 to QJWIN, it will from here forward detail QJWIN’s four operational phases and work at decoding the files and at understanding June Cobb’s role. The focus will home in on June’s intersection with John F. Kennedy’s campaign and the events surrounding his assassination.

5.2 THE NEED FOR QJWIN

“Atomic war will destroy civilization. There will be millions of people dead…. If the Kremlin and Washington ever lock up in a war, the results are too horrible to contemplate.”

—President Dwight D. Eisenhower, July 27, 1954, speaking to the president of South Korea, quoted in James C. Hagerty’s Diary

Why did the United States feel it needed an assassination program in the first place? Two words: nuclear annihilation. That made a Cold War seem preferable, in which the superpowers outsourced the battlefield to emerging countries with the goal of converting them to communism or capitalism while exploiting their resources to bolster their military might.

Countries that held the keys to nuclear superiority—like strategic positioning for missiles or raw materials for atomic bombs—were valued prizes in the race for dominance. That meant those countries were subjected to coups, power grabs, and overthrows instigated by the superpowers. Knocking off a charismatic leader who was making headway for the other side seemed preferable to engaging in a full-blown war, which could lead to the use of nuclear weapons.

Cuba had strategic positioning for nuclear missiles. The Congo held the metallic ores necessary for nuclear combustion.

A Nearby Threat Emerges: Castro, January–December 1959

Life in America was much safer in the late 1940s and throughout the ’50s, when the United States was jousting with the Soviet Union for strategic control in South America and Eastern Europe. But Cuba, just ninety miles off Florida’s shores, was a different story. Soviet missiles armed with nuclear warheads could easily fly that distance, and that made Fidel Castro a very new and scary threat.

While Castro was marching across Cuba in 1958, the United States was unsure which way the chips would fall. Would he accept an alliance with America, or would his trusted commander, Che Guevara, pull his sympathies toward the Soviet Union? Catherine Taaffe began reporting on Cuba’s ideological tug-of-war within days of Castro taking power, and her reports became more dire with every passing month. By spring of 1959, just four months into Castro’s reign, Taaffe and other well-placed sources inside Cuba were in agreement. Fidel Castro was going communist.

Shortly after delivering that bad news, Taaffe entered into one of the earliest documented conversations about assassinating Castro. After holding a candid and dangerous discussion with a rebel leader, Taaffe relayed that “the opposition groups are convinced that in order to save many hundreds of lives in Cuba, the Castro brothers, Raul and Fidel, must be eliminated.” By winter, J. C. King, chief of the CIA’s Western Hemisphere Division, agreed and drafted a memo to Allen Dulles on the “Cuban Problems,” suggesting that “thorough consideration be given to the elimination of Fidel Castro.”

Notice how Taaffe first assessed Castro’s communist bent, then reported on the underground opposing him, and then entered into the types of conversations essential to the recruitment of assassins. But killing Castro would have to wait because a more urgent situation had jumped the line. The United States had badly miscalculated with Castro, and it wasn’t planning on repeating the mistake with a populist leader on the rise in central Africa.

Lumumba Rises and Attains Power, January–August 1960

Patrice Lumumba was a charismatic African who supported independence from European colonization, and by early 1960, his star was rising in the Congo. The Belgian Congo had been established as a Belgian colony in 1908, but its independence was a certain outcome of democracy. An election scheduled for May threatened Belgium’s rule because the wildly popular Lumumba was poised to take control. Once in power, his first action would be to break colonial ties, and in that instant, the West’s control of the Congo’s vital resources would evaporate.

Just as Taaffe was present in Havana when Castro rose to power, Jerrie was in central Africa for the rise of Patrice Lumumba. She flew an Aero Commander to Africa, ostensibly to market the plane there, even though the one she was delivering was the first ever on that continent. I created a flight map from her memorabilia, and she was often inside the Congo or just across its border. Her monthlong journey ended when she delivered that plane to the Tanganyikan government, an American ally bordering the Congo’s Katanga Province. Lumumba announced his intention to break from Belgium just days before her departure.

The Congo had something Cuba didn’t, which is why Lumumba’s election sealed his fate. The Shinkolobwe uranium mine, inside Katanga Province, fueled America’s Manhattan Project and the creation of the atomic bomb. Any country that controlled this mine would hold the world’s richest uranium stores. The scholars Stephen Weissman and, more recently, Susan Williams have explored how American actions in the Congo were driven by the control of the Congo’s strategic resources. Protecting Shinkolobwe and Katanga’s other nuclear ores from Soviet exploitation became one of the highest U.S. priorities, and if that meant the elimination of democratically elected Lumumba, it was a consequence the United States was ready to assume.

The Assassination Program Is Authorized, August 1960

While the assassination program had long been brewing, CIA director Allen Dulles believed he got a green light on August 18, 1960, when Eisenhower made a muscular case to the Security Council about the need to eliminate Lumumba. The CIA placed the construction of the project into Division D, headed by the legendary officer William Harvey, who’d returned to headquarters in 1959 after a long stint as the chief of station in Berlin. Harvey’s senior partner on all things assassination-related was Arnold Silver, the former Luxembourg station chief, who was just as instrumental to the program’s creation and management. Together, Harvey and Silver reached back into their European operations of old to draft the personnel and support crew for their team.

The command center for the secret unit was housed in an innocuous section at headquarters called Staff D or Division D, a division the CIA would like us to believe was more interested in code-breaking and code-stealing. This was the leadership structure supporting the assassination program’s central agent, QJWIN.

QJWIN’s Four Operational Phases

I used the same methodology I developed for the Cobb aliases and put it to use on the QJWIN documents. I collected every file I could find on QJWIN, the agent’s projects, payments, and assignments, then assembled a booklike chronology of everything the agent had done. From that data, I constructed a timeline, as always placing more weight on concurrently dated documents than on stories that were told to investigators after the fact. Another defining tenet of my methodology was an understanding that admissions about assassination work were made only when absolutely necessary, so when I saw one eventual admission, it would supersede numerous prior denials on the same topic.

This approach revealed that QJWIN’s assassination program unfolded in a linear series of four operational phases. These phases were:

1. The Atomic Materials Era, Early 1950s–October 1960

Prior to the establishment of the assassination program, this team was involved in the monitoring and control of ores necessary for atomic bomb–making as the materials moved across international borders. The code name QJWIN was not used in this era. When the assassination program was activated and QJWIN was selected for the first assignment, the agent was chosen because of the underworld connections and cover stories they’d crafted in this era.

2. Targeting Lumumba, October–December 1960

QJWIN was given that code name after accepting the first assassination mission in October 1960. Three weeks later the agent and their support team were sent to Africa to orchestrate the demise of Lumumba, who was killed shortly thereafter. The Congo is the most heavily documented of QJWIN’s operations and will be the subject of Chapter 6.

3. European Spotting / Targeting Castro, January–April 1961

In early 1961, QJWIN was sent on a trip across Europe to recruit criminals on an ineffective assignment with no defined target. Meanwhile, June Cobb enlisted and made a delivery to the first assassin whom the CIA mobilized to kill Castro. These synchronous assignments are the focus of Chapter 7.

4. ZRRIFLE / The Kennedy Assassination, May 1961–April 1964

QJWIN’s final mission was a project called ZRRIFLE, wherein the agent was relocated to Germany for a three-year operation against an unnamed target. The project was costly and in the end was deemed to have had little purpose. Chapters 8, 9, and 10 will compare QJWIN’s movements, payouts, and assignments in ZRRIFLE to those of June Cobb and the known events surrounding the death of President Kennedy.

To understand QJWIN’s assassination operations, we must first understand who was on this team and what qualified them for the job. The atomic materials era in the mid-1950s was when QJWIN made the criminal connections and developed the cover stories that would position them for their graduation into assassinations.

5.3 THE WOMAN IN QJWIN

Numerous CIA documents directly identify QJWIN as a smuggler named Jose Mankel, a middle-aged family man, born and raised in Luxembourg, whom the agency summoned when it needed to eliminate a foreign leader. The grifter was said to be in his early to mid-forties in 1960 and was recruited by the CIA’s Luxembourg station chief, Arnold Silver, in 1958. Prior to his CIA recruitment, Mankel had been working as an informant for the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and for local Luxembourg law enforcement.

FIGURE 5A. The photo of Jose Mankel that was attached to a CIA dispatch sent from Luxembourg to headquarters on February 2, 1962.

Mankel was bland and forgettable in almost every respect, a sad-eyed balding oldster who looked like he could work in a shoe store. We know what he looks like because his photo was attached to a dispatch bearing his code name, and his full name and description were sent to Africa in advance of his mission there. William Harvey, the head of the division running the assassination program and an officer known for fastidious secrecy, made it blatantly obvious to anyone reading this file that Jose Mankel was his star, QJWIN.

However, after collecting and reading the entire QJWIN series, I realized that Mankel always worked within a team, and that this team included a deep female partner. Mankel’s job as a smuggler was completely dependent on his association with this woman. She employed him, instructed him, and, more important, had all the underworld connections that the agency touted as the reason QJWIN was so indispensable. “QJWIN is one of our very few assets who can deal with the kind of persons we are seeking,” Arnold Silver once proclaimed. We are supposed to think Jose Mankel was QJWIN. His deep female partner was engineered to disappear.

Wanda the Con and Mankel, Her Smuggler, 1955–60

The résumé that supposedly landed Mankel the job as America’s number-one killer was his decade-long stint as a smuggler in Europe. But in order to be successful at smuggling, you must first hook up with someone needing your services. And according to his file, Mankel plied his craft for only one principal client—a metallurgical business of questionable repute, run by a high-rolling fraudster and con artist extraordinaire from Liège, Belgium, named Wanda Baran Vincent.

Wanda’s faint presence in these documents belies the scope of her role, but it can be gleaned from a few poorly xeroxed pages from the QJWIN file. The Vincent metals business, started by Wanda’s husband and acquired by her through bankruptcy after his arrest, brokered the sale of nickel- and chrome-plating materials and other ores mined from Belgian Congo soil. From the early 1950s until the birth of QJWIN’s program, Mankel smuggled almost exclusively for the Vincents. But by 1955, it was all Wanda, sans the husband, running the Vincent metals scams.

Wanda needed a smuggler because her business wasn’t exactly on the up and up. The Vincents specialized in the sale of the metallic ores needed to make atomic bombs, and they weren’t very particular about who they sold to. Actually, they had a strong preference for Soviet customers, so they had to figure out how to traffic millions of dollars’ worth of heavily regulated materials across east-west borders. If that wasn’t dicey enough, the Vincents also enjoyed defrauding their customers with phony deliveries. A buyer might think they had ordered a truckload of nickel for electroplating a nuclear weapon, and the Vincents would deliver useless iron instead. Sound familiar?

To make matters worse for her customers, Wanda’s employee Mankel wasn’t just a smuggler; he was an informant working for the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and the CIA. His job was to alert U.S. intelligence so it could intervene to keep America safe. How long Mankel had been an informant isn’t spelled out, but cables from 1955 suggest he was working with federal agents back then. If so, then all the deals Wanda brokered after taking over the company were leaking information back to U.S. intelligence.

Wanda’s fraudulent business model, combined with the fact that she employed a smuggler who ran back to the CIA and FBN, raises the possibility that Wanda was running a front company to sucker in communist countries looking for nuclear materials. Mr. Vincent, whose early endeavors involved smelting down currency, was first busted in early 1954, when he delivered iron instead of nickel to a firm based in Antwerp. For that offense, he was given a suspended sentence, but just two months later he was busted again, this time in Luxembourg, with Mankel and a mysterious female partner. Vincent and Mankel were charged with “fraudulent exportation of nickel,” while the female partner, who was using an alias, escaped via Switzerland.

Shortly thereafter Wanda took over her husband’s operation and upped the stakes considerably. By early 1955, she was on the radar of U.S. authorities for reportedly dealing in the exportation of atomic devices. But by 1958 she orchestrated a jaw-dropping multimillion-dollar delivery of nuclear ore that was brokered from Africa and was being smuggled to the Soviet Union.

Wanda’s escalation of her husband’s business from the smelting of currency to the nuclear big time got me to thinking: After one of Mr. Vincent’s earlier frauds, might prosecutors have struck a deal with him to fork over his metals license, so his operation could be used as an international intelligence trap for Soviet customers?

If so, then Wanda, who dropped the husband upon acquiring the business, was an intelligence agent and a highly classified one at that.

5.4 WAS WANDA AN AGENT?

The theory that Wanda was batting for America is supported by the blasé treatment she was given by U.S. authorities in an incident that occurred in 1955. It would be hard to imagine a situation more dire than the report that Wanda, with her well-known Soviet connections, was orchestrating the “clandestine shipment of atomic devices from Poland to the United States.” Atomic smuggling was such a grave concern that that year Congress authorized a half-million-dollar reward for tips on the smuggling of nuclear materials.

Yet when the U.S. State Department got the tip that Wanda was trafficking atomic devices to the United States, the case “seems to have been dropped on the assumption that [the informant’s] story was a fabrication,” according to the CIA officer who summarized the matter. There was something about Wanda Baran Vincent that America didn’t want to delve too deeply into.

Of course, readers are no doubt recognizing a pattern from previous chapters. Catherine Taaffe was also an arms dealer specializing in, but not limited to, planes, who also stiffed her communist customers. She had pulled a fast one on Guatemala’s president by selling planes to his enemies instead, and she’d left Castro hanging on his jet order. In yet another astonishing similarity, Taaffe’s jet deal with Castro originated out of Belgium, the same country where Wanda’s atomic metals business was based.

It must be a tiny universe in which female arms dealers jilted their communist customers in multimillion-dollar deals originating out of Belgium in the 1950s that were funneling information back to U.S. intelligence, but that’s the tiny speck of a universe where both Catherine Taaffe and Wanda Baran reside. The difference is that Taaffe’s sales were in Latin America to dictators, while Baran’s sales turf was Eastern Europe to communist countries. And perhaps not coincidentally, Taaffe had long-standing connections in Wanda’s bailiwick, the mining industry. So did June Cobb.

We can already see the contours of this operation taking shape. Wanda brokered nuclear ore on the black market while working with Mankel as her hired hand. Mankel, in turn, was reporting back to the Americans in a collaboration between the Narcotics Bureau and the CIA. The role carried out by Mankel making those risky contacts would have been very important. A garden-variety smuggler is replaceable. A person you’ve propped up with an elaborate front company, not so much. The United States could then orchestrate an international bust, or Wanda could substitute unusable ores for the communist customer. If she got in trouble, she’d get a wrist slap and be off to the next scam or into a new identity, with Mankel cast as the turncoat if her customers suspected something went awry.

During this era, Mankel and a U.S. narcotics agent in Paris worked closely with the CIA’s station chief in Luxembourg, Arnold Silver. Meanwhile, William Harvey, the future head of the assassination program, was the station chief in West Berlin, the critical east-west border through which Wanda’s atomic materials were traveling. Mankel, Harvey, and Silver all moved forward into the assassination program, or so the documents would have us believe.

But what about Wanda? Would Mankel have had the high-rolling criminal connections without her? And if Wanda was an intelligence agent with underworld connections running this front company, wouldn’t she be the better choice for QJWIN—playing the part of a high-roller who could plunk down millions for an assassination to protect her criminal empire—with Mankel acting as a cutout to the U.S. authorities, allowing her to remain concealed both in the field and throughout the government’s paperwork?

5.5 THE GREAT COBALT BUST, 1957–1958

Wanda Baran’s nuclear business blew up spectacularly in 1958, when German officials caught one of her trucks attempting to haul $3 million worth of cobalt to East Germany disguised as a nonthreatening delivery of chalk. The cobalt had been mined in the Belgian Congo soil and shipped by sea to Belgium, and was destined for East Berlin, the gateway to Soviet Russia.

But at a border check in Germany, an alert official noticed that her truck’s weight didn’t match the expected density for chalk. He found that the top layer of chalk was concealing a fortune in atomically useful cobalt. Funny how certain female arms dealers’ deliveries in the Cold War didn’t seem to make it across the Iron Curtain or into the hands of American enemies.

By this time, fickle Wanda had dumped the husband and was running her scams with a new boyfriend and grifter, Camille Croughs. But lucky in love, unlucky in cobalt. News of the bust eventually reached the United States in a syndicated report that ran in June 1958.

COBALT SMUGGLING RING IS CRACKED

German and Belgian authorities have cracked a ring which has been smuggling vast quantities of cobalt to Russia, presumably for nuclear bomb production.

The cobalt was smuggled from the Belgian Congo via Belgium and West Germany to Communist East Berlin, the center for Soviet smuggling of strategic materials.

German authorities said the cobalt smuggling ring was an intricate one, headed by Belgian coffin producer, Camille Croughs, and a pretty blonde former dancer, Wanda-Helena Baran, 37, of Sweden [emphasis added].

Croughs and Miss Baran face trial in Belgium, accused of the attempted smuggling of 166 tons of cobalt valued on the black market at $3,100,000.

While only a few American newspapers ran the story, in Belgium the sordid drama made headlines for months. I was able to excavate news coverage of the affair after spending a day pursuing vintage newspapers in the Kortrijk Public Library in Belgium. Reporters there concluded the coquettish blond was the boss of the “Belgian Cobalt Corridor,” with the help of her boyfriend and sidekick, Croughs. Wanda orchestrated her scams out of a building in Liège, an inn that she converted into her import-export hub. Of course, she didn’t spend much time in the region because she was always away wheeling and dealing.

Belgian journalists were eager to catch a glimpse of her, but at her extradition swap, she dove away from cameras, leaving one reporter to conclude, “Of only one type of person does she seem frightened—photographers.”

FIGURE 5B. Wanda Baran, as pictured in the Grenz Echo Belgian newspaper on February 7, 1958.

Her boyfriend, Croughs, pled guilty to the crime, but Wanda maintained her innocence until the bitter end. A judge differed, sentencing her to eighteen months, but no record exists of how much time, beyond her initial detainment, she served. Jose Mankel was never mentioned in news reports or arrest records in connection with this incident.

Now, let’s fast-forward to October 1960, when Wanda was on the loose again and back to her old tricks. This time she was partnered with Mankel only weeks before many on this team would make the jump to the CIA’s assassination program. They were now embroiled in a European heroin deal that was—surprise, surprise—funneling information back to U.S. intelligence.

5.6 HEROIN TANGO IN PARIS, SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 1960

It’s not often that we’re given a fly-on-the-wall perspective on a secret operation, but thanks to a detailed report from Andrew Tartaglino, the American narcotics agent in Paris who was working with Arnold Silver, we are given a spectacular window into Wanda and Mankel’s working relationship. This time Wanda and Mankel were penetrating a heroin ring, with Mankel feeding information back to Tartaglino, who authored the report.

Even though this was a drug sting and not a nuclear deal, the project was being supervised at a higher level by Silver at the CIA. Whether Silver was wrapping up old business or laying groundwork for QJWIN’s next phase is unclear. What is not in doubt is that Silver already had QJWIN in mind for an assassination mission in Africa that was only weeks away.

The dramatic episode began on October 10, 1960, when Mankel tipped off Agent Tartaglino that a large amount of heroin was being brokered by a European diplomat. The goal would be for Tartaglino to go undercover, posing as a drug buyer to initiate a sting, but first Mankel needed to loop Tartaglino into the deal. In illegal deals like this one, precautions are often taken before the true principals show up. In this case, Mankel and Tartaglino went to a Paris airport café expecting to meet Wanda’s boyfriend, Camille Croughs, who would put them in touch with the drug sellers. Instead, Wanda Baran appeared.

Wanda explained that she was pinch-hitting for Croughs, who had been detained at a border, but it quickly became apparent that the A-team had just arrived. According to Tartaglino’s eyewitness account, Wanda first called the envoy for the drug seller from a phone booth and, donning a phony Flemish dialect, instructed the criminal to proceed to Berlin for a rendezvous with the undercover agent. Then Wanda schooled the federal agent in how to proceed to the meeting, how he should enter into the drug buy, and what the expectations would be. She then sent Mankel scurrying off on an errand. Here is how Tartaglino described Wanda setting up the sting:

She made it clear that it would not be necessary to bring any monies to Berlin on this trip since this would be merely an introductory discussion. To these terms I agreed and she then drew from her purse Belgian Francs in the equivalent of 360.00 and gave them to [MANKEL] telling him to purchase a one way first class ticket to Berlin [for TARTAGLINO]. Further, she stated that [the envoy for the drug seller] would purchase my return ticket once we met in Germany.

Notice that it was Wanda, not Mankel, who had all the connections to the criminals. There are a number of reasons to suspect Wanda was an agent here, not the least of which is that she was never a target for arrest. That, combined with her history of stiffing communist customers while evading American scrutiny, along with her long-standing employment of the informant Mankel, makes her look like the deep cover agent in this configuration.

Let’s remember that Tartaglino was coordinating this with the CIA and had been from the start. If Wanda was a CIA agent, it would explain Silver’s oversight of this project, which otherwise appears to be a routine drug sting, the kind of work Mankel had been conducting with the FBN for years. But Wanda’s covert status and complex front company would have been a closely guarded secret.

Casting Mankel as the informant would have solved a lot of potential problems for the CIA. He shielded Wanda from exposure to America’s allied partners and protected her in the paperwork typed up at other agencies. In the parlance of intelligence, Mankel would have been the “cutout” here, a person who couriers information and, in doing so, maintains the security of an important espionage compartment. This could have been Mankel’s one and only role.

If we listen very carefully, aren’t we hearing echoes of June Cobb and her prior work in Latin America, helping Uncle Sam tee up drug busts? Like Wanda, June was tangled up in heroin trafficking when her fiancé was running drugs to Cuba. Like Wanda, June assisted the Narcotics Bureau, in the sting of her boyfriend’s drug lab. Like Wanda, June was never acknowledged as a federal agent in that paperwork, even though the arrests couldn’t have been made without her. And like Wanda, there is every reason to suspect that June was a federal agent all along.

And what about Catherine Taaffe and Wanda and their multimillion-dollar arms deals? Wanda and Taaffe were both arms dealers who stiffed their communist customers, but they did so in different geographical regions, with Taaffe in Latin America and Wanda in Eastern Europe. That’s the same geographical divide separating June and Wanda in their drug stings. And to complete this three-part harmony FBI sources said Taaffe previously worked with the Narcotics Bureau, meaning all three of these women—June, Taaffe, and Wanda—worked on Narcotics Bureau operations.

It was certainly dawning on me that Wanda could be another name used by Agent Cobb, but at this stage, that hypothesis is far from proven. Still, it gives us a framework for what comes next. In the next series of chapters, we will review the most astonishing three-way similarity of all: that Wanda, June, and Catherine Taaffe all had connections to America’s assassination schemes targeting world leaders. And that similarity brings us full circle to the one and only agent who the CIA’s files say joined Harvey’s assassination program as its central operative: the mysterious CIA agent code-named QJWIN.

INTERLUDE 5

Hall of Fame

When Jerrie emailed to tell me she was being inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame, I felt a jolt. A swanky black-tie shindig was planned in Dayton, Ohio, where she would be enshrined alongside aviation royalty, a few of whose boots had touched the moon. The way she dropped the news, I suspected she was hinting for me to go but was declining to attend herself, claiming some new difficulty with her hearing.

If she was dangling a fishhook, I bit. When I told her I’d bought my tickets, she was thrilled and emailed back with the idea that I could accept the award for her.

I had to sit with that. She’d invited me to accept the most important honor of her career, even after I’d confronted her about being June. Was it because I’d entered the inner sanctum of those who’d seen beyond the first refracted light? I declined, because I sensed she’d already lined up a fellow member of the Mercury 13, Rhea Woltman, and because I was currently hip-deep into decoding what I suspected was her lifetime of secret operations.

Jerrie insisted that I ask to be seated at her “friends’ table” and forwarded the event’s contact information. I’d barely hit send on an email when my phone rang. It was an organizer from the Aviation Hall of Fame.

Are you telling me you’re in touch with Jerrie Cobb? Nobody’s seen her or been in contact with her for years! She refuses to attend the event! We’ve never had an honoree refuse to attend before. Even Neil Armstrong came. We’ve heard her companion Ruth keeps everyone away. No one can get through.

I don’t think I understood until that moment how reclusive Jerrie had become, or perhaps had always been. These organizers couldn’t get hold of her, and neither could the famous aviators and astronauts they’d sent with messages to break through. I had never really had much trouble reaching her. Once she’d agreed to do the film, she’d responded to my emails promptly and followed through when we made plans. These folks thought I might be the only person on the planet for whom that was the case.

Well, this Hall of Fame was going to be worth the price of admission now! I decided to bring a friend along as my plus-one, a man who’d served in the army in Vietnam, so we could more easily circulate with the military aviators and officers who would be in attendance. Our plan was to chat up a few old-timers who had known Jerrie back in the day. Clearly, there would be pilots there who knew her or who bumped into her at air bases. The possibilities were endless, and it would be a cinch to get into these conversations since so much of the evening would be dedicated to her.

Did I mention, nothing ever goes as planned, once you’ve entered the alternate universe of June Cobb? Sitting to my left at dinner was Eileen Collins, a military test pilot and the first woman to command a space shuttle. Eileen was there to announce Jerrie’s induction, and she was deeply grateful for the trailblazing work of Jerrie and the Mercury 13, but she just didn’t know her. She told me their paths had crossed only once, when Jerrie taxied in for an arranged meeting on a tarmac to congratulate Eileen on her selection for the shuttle. It was a fleeting encounter, and it would be the only personal remembrance I’d hear about Jerrie all night.

This massive ballroom was packed with hundreds of aviation luminaries with chests full of medals and wings, but the only other person who knew Jerrie was sitting right across from me at our table. Rhea Woltman was a member of the Mercury 13, and Jerrie had tapped her to accept the award on her behalf. Now in her eighties, Rhea had a windswept tangle of unruly white hair piled up under a dramatic hat, her signature accessory. I’m a hat person, too, and not long after Jerrie and I first met, she commented that my penchant for hats reminded her of Rhea.

But if Rhea and I shared a common sensibility, you never would have known it at this dinner. Her eyes darted away, and everything I said to her bounced off, as if not heard by older ears. I never knew a six-foot distance could be so far.

Of all the people from Jerrie’s past, I thought Rhea might have information that could shed light on Jerrie’s secrets. The Mercury 13 were never brought together during testing, but Rhea had stayed at Jerrie’s home in Oklahoma during the psychological testing phase. In and of itself, that might not mean they were friends, but when I’d once asked Jerrie who was her favorite of the Mercury 13, she’d quickly answered it was Rhea. Furthermore, when Jerrie made the comment about Rhea wearing hats, her eyes shimmered with an unmistakable sparkle of fondness. She cared about Rhea more than the others, and as small as that reveal was, it was probably the most emotion I’ve ever seen her show about anybody.

Even with everything I was uncovering about Jerrie, I continued to have deep admiration for these NASA trailblazers. Jerrie and the Mercury 13 were norm-defying icons, and Eileen Collins was obviously built from heroic timber. I didn’t think it was necessary that any of the others in the Mercury 13 should know anything about the deeper role Jerrie might have played. U.S. government agencies supplied cover to CIA operatives. That’s just how spying works. The Mercury 13 wasn’t even an official government program, a measure of distance that NASA is keen to highlight even now. But spies needed cover to ply their craft, and there were a myriad of ways the agency was prepared to conjure it for them.

Everything I had learned about Jerrie was changing my understanding of the purpose of the Mercury 13. The more I thought about it, the more I believed the group had served a dual role. The surface role was a legitimate scientific exploration of women’s capabilities for future use in NASA. The Russians were training women cosmonauts, and it was prudent for the United States to keep up by studying gender differences in space flight. In that respect, the story of the Mercury 13 is still a true story, and their pioneering advancements were still groundbreaking.

But perhaps the program’s other role—and, I was suspecting, its covert function—was to create a cover story for Jerrie Cobb. She was still perceived to be a private citizen, but her loose affiliation with NASA gave her every reason to be seen flying into air bases and top-secret facilities, and she did so often. Most people in her orbit would have had no idea there was a covert objective. The fewer souls in the loop, the more secure the operation would be. Jerrie might have been the only intelligence agent who was run through the program, or there could have been others. Spying and aviation have been bedfellows ever since mankind first took to the air.

But aviation and spying had yet another thing in common: both were fields where women struggled for equality. An old adage has it that women make the best spies, but that didn’t mean they were elevated to leadership roles in the midcentury agency. Eloise Page was the first female chief of station, but she didn’t break that glass ceiling until 1978. Ironically, while Jerrie was joining this elite group of aviators in the Hall of Fame, she may have had no equal in what I was now suspecting was her true profession. At the height of the Cold War, you don’t put your second best on Fidel Castro.

When the time came for Jerrie’s induction, Eileen acknowledged that her own career had launched from Jerrie’s shoulders, and Rhea accepted the award in Jerrie’s stead. As Rhea sat back down wearing Jerrie’s medal, I tried to congratulate her but once again ran into a brick wall. All evening, I’d been trying to figure out whether Rhea was acting scattered or evasive. Her flighty acceptance speech chalked up points for scattered, but after two hours of being blocked by her Heisman Trophy stiff-arm, I settled on evasive.

Lack of eye contact be damned, I wasn’t going to let this opportunity slide. After dinner, I worked my way into a greeting line to talk to Rhea. I was going to be as direct as possible, but I also planned to launch a small probe. When my turn finally arrived, I shook her hand, congratulated her, and then took a page out of Jerrie’s book. I locked in to a knowing gaze to impress my point and spoke with calculated emphasis.

M: I understand from Jerrie that you know her very well. Perhaps better than anyone else in the Mercury 13.

Rhea looked at me with a cutting clarity I hadn’t seen from her all evening.

R: Yes, I do know Jerrie very well. But I still like her…. Do you like her?

That burning question was now top of mind for the guardians of the inner sanctum.

SIX

Lumumba

6.1 THE GREEN LIGHT, AUGUST–OCTOBER 1960

When President Eisenhower made the case to his Security Council on August 18, 1960, about the need to remove Lumumba from his prime ministry in the Congo, the United States didn’t have an assassination unit ready to solve that problem, but that would quickly change. A week later, on August 26, CIA director Allen Dulles cabled the following instructions to the Congo’s Leopoldville station:

In highest quarters here it is the clear cut conclusion that if [Lumumba] continues to hold high office, the inevitable result will at best be chaos and at worst pave the way to communist takeover of the Congo…. Consequently we conclude that his removal must be an urgent and prime objective and that under existing conditions this should be a high priority of our covert action.

That same week Jerrie blasted onto the pages of the August 29, 1960, edition of Life, and a frenetic press junket followed, after which she disappeared from view. She claimed NASA wanted her wisdom teeth pulled so she could qualify for space, but NASA had no intention of launching her anywhere.

Meanwhile, Bronson Tweedy, the African Division chief at CIA headquarters, and Leopoldville station were urgently cabling back and forth about how Lumumba’s assassination should best be accomplished. By mid-September, the leader had lost his grip on power and was hunkered in his home under UN protection. But even after American ally Colonel Mobutu Sese Seko seized control of the Congo in a bloodless coup, Lumumba’s longevity was not assured. His boasts of support from the Soviet Union, combined with his populist appeal, suggested an ability to regain control, a possibility that America’s military-industrial immune system found to be untenable.

Sidney Gottlieb, the agency’s technical services director, was dispatched to the Congo with a vial of poison, but there was no way to deliver the deadly dose without leaving an American fingerprint. You see, assassinating someone with the sole goal of killing them is a hack; arranging the dominoes to fall on your enemy afterward is the art form. Leopoldville station was struggling to find an assassin who was not only trustworthy but could also generate the approved fallout. After much hand-wringing, on October 7, 1960, African chief Tweedy offered this solution from headquarters:

Meanwhile, we considering dispatching third party national operator who, when he arrives, should then be assessed by you over period to see whether he might play active role or cutout role on fulltime basis. If you conclude he suitable and bearing in mind heavy extra load this places on you, would expect dispatch TDY [tour of duty] senior case officer run this op and outside agent full-time under your direction. In any case third national would not be witting prior dispatch from here and would ostensibly be scheduled perform general ops role. Will advise progress on this man.

Tweedy just spelled out the assassination team’s configuration, and the plan was to send three CIA operatives to Africa. The first would be a third-party national, meaning a person who was neither American nor local to the region. This person would be assigned as a general agent to the station but would also be available to assist with the Lumumba operation. Two more team members would follow who were specialists for the assignment—a senior case officer to run the operation, and an outside agent in an unspecified role.

This was the QJWIN team, and it was a three-person team. Meanwhile, back in New York City, June Cobb was preparing for her next phase with the CIA.

6.2 JUNE COBB PREPARES, SEPTEMBER–NOVEMBER 1960

June Cobb kept phoning Havana, but the answer was always the same. She’d gradually come under suspicion of spying in Cuba and was no longer welcome to return. On paper, she and her case officer appeared to be grasping to figure out her path forward with the agency. Should Cobb pretend to be “pro-Castro,” “anti-Castro,” or “middle of the road,” Pierson pondered, with each choice dissected for the pros, cons, and degree of difficulty of its performance.

But while the agency was figuring out what to do with Cobb, she was suddenly assigned her own sterile phone line to headquarters so she could securely get in touch with her case officers at any hour of the day or night. The only other agent I found in the JFK Assassination Records who received a similar setup was Manuel Artime, the Cuban exile the CIA was positioning to take over if Castro was ousted.

FIGURE 6A. In this November 5, 1960, memo, Jean Pierson evaluates the pros and cons of roles June Cobb could play.

Click here to view as text.

In addition to her hotline to headquarters, Cobb was issued a fresh alias to go with it. “June Corwin” debuted in June’s file as her new alias the same day Leopoldville was told to expect the three-person team. As “June Corwin,” Cobb was then booked on a flight and whisked away for a multiple-day briefing, an ordeal involving a lie detector grilling and a surveillance team monitoring her and her case officer from the next room. Three weeks later J. CorWIN’s rhyming and alliterative cousin, QJWIN, was assigned that code name after accepting the Congo assignment.

Meanwhile, June’s case officer initiated a series of background checks on all things Cobb. She ran interagency traces on June’s family, friends, and acquaintances. She asked the security office to launch a limited investigation into her “relationship” to Jerrie. Bugs were wired into Cobb’s hotel room, and a team of agents was installed next door for twenty-four-hour surveillance. Then, for a full five weeks, they recorded in their log every television show June watched and every rustling noise from her bedroom at three a.m.

During this period, Cobb was trained in secret writing, taken to agency doctors, donned new clothing at her case officer’s instruction, underwent psychological exams, took a polygraph, and had her luggage searched and her purse rifled through, all of which resulted in a tidal wave of paperwork to her file. The sheer amount of manpower assigned to this one agent is staggering, and it conflicts with the narrative, spun in her file, that she was an espionage neophyte for whom the agency was groping to find a viable assignment.

Suffice to say, June was tested, watched, trained, evaluated, and prepared for something—but prepared and evaluated for what? “Project Seal” was the code name given to this period of Cobb scrutiny. But it all came to a sudden halt on November 16, 1960, when the security office pronounced that the Cobb case was now closed, with “no closing memo required.”

Five days later QJWIN arrived in Africa. QJWIN, too, had just undergone a month of rigorous preparations. They’d agreed to take on the Congo job in mid-October, but the agent’s departure was delayed because they needed to visit doctors, buy clothing, and attend special briefings. Eventually, headquarters lost patience with the pace of the preparations and cabled Luxembourg:

Instruct Mankel have passport renewed at once and speed up immunizations.

The week after Mankel was given the instruction to speed up immunizations, June’s case officer took her to a doctor’s appointment in New York City. She was seeing an agency physician whose job it was to provide travel immunizations, with records kept using pseudonyms, so whatever June was doing next, or wherever that might take her, would remain secure. These dated forms remain in her file, with no specifics about what medications she received or where she intended to travel.

Whatever assignment June was embarking on next, if any, is never mentioned, but Lumumba was on her mind. During her monthlong preparations, Cobb often entertained guests in her hotel suite, while the agents next door recorded their conversations. June then reported what was said to her case officer, so we have two sets of records of the same events.

Richard Gibson, an African American journalist who would soon become a CIA agent if he wasn’t one already, was a frequent visitor, sipping drinks with Cobb over discussions of Lumumba. In one of their late-night chats, the topic of assassinations came up, a conversation June felt compelled to report to her case officer. After downing a half-bottle of scotch, Gibson opined that sometimes the need arises to eliminate someone, but it shouldn’t be done by locals. “There are professional people who will come in and do a job,” he explained.

Gibson was critiquing a poorly done operation by Cuba, where a criminal named Molina the Hook botched an attack in New York City, an incident Gibson assessed as a hack job. But while June reported this conversation to her case officer, the federal agents next door failed to record that the topic of conversation had been assassination.

This period of Cobb scrutiny came to an end in mid-November. Both she and QJWIN were ready. Only one of them, according to their files, was officially deployed.

6.3 TIMELINING THE CONGO OPS

By now, the reader is well aware of my timelining methods, so let’s get down to the central question: Where were Jerrie and June when QJWIN was in Africa? See Figure 6B.

The gray box from November 21 to December 11, 1960, indicates that QJWIN was indisputably present on the African continent. For the month leading into QJWIN’s departure, June was a whirling dervish of activity, but while the agent was in Africa, traces for June all but disappear. Jerrie was in seclusion for wisdom tooth surgery and had no provable conflicts. But June did have two potential conflicts, and here’s where it’s important to evaluate the strength of that evidence.

For the six weeks prior to Africa, June is accounted for most days. Numerous sources of data—case officer visits, phone calls, and direct surveillance of her activities—resulted in hundreds of pages of documents proving she was in New York City. But suddenly that flurry of activity stopped, and during QJWIN’s trip, her file contains just three slim pieces of paper, typed up by June herself. One even offered an excuse for her sudden disappearance:

I have been hibernating here working on the Sharks and the Sardines [book translation], therefore I have heard little from my Latin friends, however I did see Roas courier, the young Manolo, a night or two ago, and was surprised to hear from him.

FIGURE 6B. The June-Jerrie timeline during QJWIN’s Africa mission.

June’s note goes on to say she recently attended an event in Manhattan, but all we have is her say-so. She didn’t even submit these two dated memos to her case officer until December 12, the day after QJWIN settled up their hotel bill in Africa. I logged June’s notes onto the timeline, but with a healthy question mark attached.

Jerrie was the first to reappear, turning up at the Lovelace Clinic for an EKG in mid-December, even though she’d passed the astronaut tests the year before. Days after Jerrie’s checkup, June resumed her usual case officer contacts, with her first order of business being her approach to the assassin the CIA enlisted to target Fidel Castro (the focus of Chapter 7).

Was Agent Cobb deployed to Africa on this mission? The timeline opens up that possibility. If she was, she couldn’t have been the senior case officer, who had arrived earlier. She also couldn’t have been the third-party national, who had military commando skills. She would have had to be the mysterious “outside agent,” whose mission was originally to take place in the African port city of Dakar.

6.4 THE OUTSIDE AGENT: QJWIN’S ASSIGNMENT IN DAKAR

Let’s remember that the original plan, set out in Tweedy’s cable to the Congo, was to send three agents to Africa: a senior case officer to run the operation, a third-party national who would answer to the Leopoldville station, and an “outside agent” in an unspecified role. So who was this outside agent, and what was this person’s assignment?

As Richard Gibson so artfully explained to June Cobb, assassinations are best conducted by professionals who live outside the target zone. After carefully timelining these documents, I came to understand that QJWIN’s original assignment wasn’t in the Congo region, where Patrice Lumumba resided. The early plan was to send QJWIN to Dakar, Africa’s westernmost city, over two thousand miles away. There they were to conduct a shopping spree for criminals in the bustling metropolitan port. QJWIN was told that the CIA had “evidence of Soviet operations among nationality groups, specifically, Corsicans, and that we would like him to spot, assess and recommend some dependable, quick witted persons for our use.”

Remember, this team was brought in not simply to accomplish the killing but to cast blame in a preferred direction. The CIA already had numerous methods by which it could kill Lumumba. A vial of poison was waiting in the station’s safe, which could have been slipped into Lumumba’s toothpaste. The station had requested a high-powered rifle because the “hunting” was good when the light was right. A commando assault on Lumumba’s home by the third-party national was even weighed for its pros and cons. Any one of these methods would have gotten rid of Lumumba. They just lacked the proper sleight of hand.

QJWIN’s role as the outside agent was to orchestrate the illusion. They were to find suitable thugs for hire in Dakar, preferably ones known to have worked with the Soviets, while avoiding detection by local law enforcement. The key ingredient here was that QJWIN wouldn’t appear to be a CIA agent, and the criminals would be in the dark about who was doing the hiring. That means the most important component of this operation would be QJWIN’s cover.

Now let’s consider the Wanda/Mankel operations of old and explore how, in the assassination of Lumumba, that team could have cast blame elsewhere. Wanda Baran ran a multimillion-dollar business purchasing ores from the Belgian Congo and smuggling them through Eastern Europe to her communist customers. Her company could have been real or it might have been a front. Either way, she was moving ores and shipping them through African port cities like Dakar that were well positioned on the Atlantic coastline to move goods from central Africa to Belgium and overland to Eastern Europe.

Theoretically, a Lumumba presidency would threaten Wanda’s illegal business model because Lumumba would simply sell to the Soviets directly, making her smuggling syndicate obsolete. He would allow nuclear ores to be shipped openly to the Soviet Union in a straight line through ports in eastern Africa, with no need for smuggling through western ports like Dakar, or by using Wanda. That means a Lumumba presidency would harm both Wanda’s nuclear ore business and port cities like Dakar.

We can quickly see how Wanda’s illegal smuggling syndicate, if it was a front company controlled by the CIA, would have been an excellent cover for hiring disgruntled thugs in Dakar to get rid of Lumumba, and it’s hard to see how Mankel could have crafted the illusion without her. That’s why, when I saw in William Harvey’s November 2 instructions to Dakar that Mankel was, once again, to be partnered with someone named “Wanda,” I had to wonder if that coincidence was a little too astonishing.

New Wanda was a full-time CIA agent and is referred to in these documents by her pseudonym, “Wanda Crickard.” Her role was to contact Mankel in Dakar and supply him with money and instructions as he circulated throughout the port hiring hoodlums. One missing dispatch, authored before Mankel was asked to join this team, discussed Wanda Crickard’s role and was said to define who QJWIN was.

Harvey liberally referenced the missing dispatch, titled “AUDA-234,” throughout his November 2 instructions, because this second set of instructions was building upon previous discussions between CIA headquarters and Dakar station. From Harvey’s dispatch, we learn that “AUDA-234” discussed Wanda Crickard a lot, and that Wanda was enlisted into this mission by the time “AUDA-234” was sent on October 7, 1960. That’s an interesting date, considering that it’s the same day that Tweedy told the Congo that the mission would involve a three-person team.

The missing dispatch raises interesting questions about QJWIN’s identity and about whether we are getting the full picture of who the three players were who were sent on this mission. It makes sense that the agents would have been concealed on an operation this sensitive. Someone would also have to have been in charge of orchestrating that illusion.

QJWIN’s entire Congo operation was being run out of William Harvey’s Division D at headquarters, making Harvey the man responsible for this mission. But Harvey repeatedly told Congress and their investigators that he knew very little about QJWIN’s African mission or the operation against Lumumba. That creates a disconnect between Harvey’s sworn testimony and the real-time documentary record.

So who was William Harvey, and can his word be trusted?

6.5 WILLIAM HARVEY: TALL, FAT, RED-FACED, AND SMOKING A CIGAR

William King Harvey was a hard-drinking, hard-boiled FBI agent from Indiana who joined the CIA in 1947 after serving in the bureau’s Counterintelligence Division. After his partying ways derailed his law enforcement career, he transferred to the CIA, where he quickly rose in the ranks and landed the plum position of chief of Berlin station, supervising the construction of a tunnel that surveilled enemy communications. In 1959, on the heels of that success, Harvey was recalled to headquarters to head the agency’s mysterious Division D, a section that was supposedly involved in breaking enemy codes but was also soon to be tasked with assassination.

According to Harvey’s testimony to the Church Committee in 1975, it was the deputy director of plans, Richard Bissell, who asked Harvey to explore developing the capability to assassinate a foreign leader. Harvey accepted the assignment and quickly enlisted his Division D deputy, Arnold Silver, as his right-hand man. Then at Silver’s suggestion, the team recruited QJWIN. So far, that story matches the documentary record.

But in his congressional testimonies and interviews, Harvey dated his conversation with Bissell and the inception of that assassination program to early 1961, just after QJWIN’s Congo operation was over. Harvey then told a Church Committee investigator, “I do not know specifically what QJWIN did in the Congo. I do not think that I ever had such knowledge,” and added that he became aware of QJWIN only after Silver recommended him in early 1961. He told much the same story to a second interviewer, who summarized Harvey’s views as follows:

Harvey is not sure how much he knew of QJWIN’s mission to the Congo for [Justin] O’Donnell [the senior case officer sent to the Congo], although he thinks that he may well have signed some of the cables…. In any event, Silver briefed Harvey about it later when they were in discussion [about QJ] WIN as a possible ZRRIFLE asset.

That story puts Harvey in direct conflict with the documentary record in provable ways. First, in Harvey’s November 2, 1960, dispatch to Dakar, penned under his known pseudonym Daniel Presland, he outlined a whole lot of personal detail about QJWIN and the agent’s African assignment. And second, in Harvey’s wrap-up memo of January 11, 1961, he characterized QJWIN’s Congo operation as an unmitigated success, then laid out the departmental billing for the entire mission in knowledgeable detail.

Harvey disavowed his connection to these documents, saying both may simply have been prepared for his signature. But these two documents alone call into question the veracity of Harvey’s testimony.

The problems for his story hardly stop there. Another conflict arises with Harvey’s claim that the “activities in the Congo were not a Staff D operation.” During QJWIN’s Congo mission and the preparation before it, almost every cable discussing QJWIN’s recruitment for this mission, the payments for the project, and how the agent should be managed originated from Harvey’s Division D. Even more damning is that most bear signifiers showing that Harvey was an intended recipient of the communication, was to be consulted, or should take an action regarding those cables (see Figure 6C).

FIGURE 6C. A sampling of CIA cables and dispatches about QJWIN’s Africa mission that bear William Harvey’s call letters C/FI/D, meaning “Chief, Foreign Intelligence, Division D.” Most indicate they were written in conference with Harvey or were requesting his action.

Even if Harvey delegated this work to Arnold Silver, who authorized many of the cables, it’s inconceivable that a division chief would be completely detached from any operation, let alone from an assassination plot or other covert action against a foreign leader that was being run and funded out of his department. Then Harvey asks us to believe that coincidentally, in late January 1961, he assembled the same team of Silver and QJWIN for assassination work, as if this were a new idea, turning a blind eye to the work they’d just conducted for his department in the Congo.

During QJWIN’s mission, when Silver was cabling the Congo from Division D at headquarters, he was in constant contact with the senior case officer who had been dispatched to Africa to manage that plot. That senior officer is said, within the cable traffic and in numerous sworn testimonies, to have been the former World War II hero Justin E. O’Donnell. According to both Bissell and Harvey, it was Bissell who selected O’Donnell to run the Lumumba mission, but O’Donnell strenuously objected to the assassination plot on moral grounds and wanted nothing to do with a killing.

Now, since a vial of poison had already been delivered to the Congo, a hunting rifle had been requested by the chief of station, and a commando assault on Lumumba’s home was being pondered, you might wonder why O’Donnell was still sent out on this assignment. But according to the real-time record of operational communications, that’s exactly how things unfolded.

In fact, cables between headquarters and Luxembourg station even say it was O’Donnell who personally traveled to Europe and recruited QJWIN, in a face-to-face meeting, for this mission. Supposedly O’Donnell, using the pseudonym Oliver Altman, flew to Frankfurt, where he met QJWIN at a hotel lobby on November 2, 1960, at exactly three p.m. But when the Luxembourg chief explained to QJWIN how to recognize O’Donnell/Altman in the lobby, he told QJWIN to look for a “tall, fat, red-faced” man who would be “smoking a cigar” and would introduce himself as “Mr. Black.”

FIGURE 6D. Left: Justin O’Donnell, as pictured in the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader in 1947. Right: William Harvey, from his CIA file from January 1961.

According to a 1947 picture I found in his hometown newspaper in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, as well as photos from his high school yearbook and his World War II army enlistment records, Justin O’Donnell was a fit and trim man of medium height with a slender face and finely boned features. Furthermore, his Washington Post obituary says he was stationed in Turkey as chief of station from 1957 to 1961, which, if true, places O’Donnell a long way from Harvey’s FI/D Division during QJWIN’s mission. It’s William Harvey who fits the tall, fat, red-faced, cigar-smoking description.

Furthermore, I discovered a document in the JFK 2022 release that spells out that William Harvey was medically cleared for a tour of duty to Germany exactly at the moment when “Altman” met with QJWIN for the Congo recruitment. I even found a return flight manifest listing for “William K. Harvey” traveling with a diplomatic passport from Frankfurt back to New York City on November 5, 1960. This looks like game, set, match: William Harvey went to Frankfurt to recruit QJWIN.

But wait. Harvey also penned the long document describing the entire Dakar mission for QJWIN, and that document specifically indicates that it was typewritten on exactly November 2, 1960, and signed with Harvey’s pseudonym. That lengthy dispatch would seem to place Harvey in the United States at headquarters on the day QJWIN was recruited. If he was, then he departed for Frankfurt on or after November 2.

Harvey probably traveled through New York City on his way to Germany, a deduction we can make because his return flight from Frankfurt arrived in New York, which was the hub for most international flights in the era. That means Harvey’s travels took him right near where June Cobb was staying in Manhattan, at or near the time of QJWIN’s recruitment. So what was June Cobb doing on November 2, 1960, at exactly three p.m.?

According to Cobb’s case officer, Jean Pierson, June was doing something very important. At 1:33 p.m., Pierson telephoned the security officers who were surveilling Cobb’s New York City hotel room and alerted them that Pierson would be coming by to get Cobb in ten minutes, and they would be gone for about four hours. Cobb was staying at the Park Chambers Hotel in New York City, and the Park Chambers had a lobby. QJWIN’s meeting with Altman was at three p.m., and it was also in a hotel lobby.

At 6:55 p.m., Pierson called the agents surveilling Cobb’s empty room and, while using her own alias, told them she would be “at the site in 20 minutes and talk to the subject [Cobb] about a very important matter.” The case officer added that she needed the results of tonight’s “conference” with Cobb to take with her to D.C. tomorrow. Cobb then arrived at her room at 7:20 p.m., turned up her TV, and immediately received a guest, which would have been Pierson. The bulk of the women’s conversation was not detailed in the log. Pierson’s tip-offs about important conversations suggest these logs are incomplete at best and were shaped at the case officer’s instruction.

So who actually recruited QJWIN, and where did that recruitment happen? Perhaps we could better solve this puzzle by hearing Justin O’Donnell’s version of his recruitment of QJWIN. After all, he testified to the Church Committee about this assassination operation on three separate occasions. But unlike Harvey and Bissell’s Church Committee testimonies, O’Donnell’s has never been released. To this day, we cannot directly read what O’Donnell, who testified under the alias Michael Mulroney, told the Church Committee.

Between the missing testimonies, the mismatched descriptions of “Altman” and O’Donnell, and Cobb’s manipulated surveillance log, I was beginning to wonder how much “impersonating for a while” might be happening in this program. Were the agents who were sent on the African assignment impersonating other CIA agents, who could then claim to be elsewhere or to have had minimal involvement? And does this technique explain the strange overlap between Jerrie and June Cobb?

A few days after QJWIN’s recruitment for the mission, William Harvey returned from Frankfurt. On November 7, Jerrie Cobb also reentered the United States from Jamaica, after taking a trip I cannot otherwise explain. This location data for Jerrie on a flight from Jamaica to Miami is one of very few direct conflicts between Jerrie and June on my timeline. On the day Jerrie made that flight, June was surveilled in her hotel room alone, coughing, sighing, pulling drawers, rustling papers, and slamming her door a total of nineteen times, as recorded by the agents next door. But if the agents monitoring her had been alerted to June’s sensitive conversation with Pierson days before, this log could have been managed in other crucial respects. James Angleton’s wilderness of mirrors was suddenly flashing through my mind.

While it’s fascinating to parse William Harvey’s deeper role in QJWIN’s Africa mission, the criminal recruitments that Harvey outlined for the port city of Dakar weren’t meant to be. Circumstances in the Congo were quickly changing, and a week after Harvey sent the November 2 dispatch outlining QJWIN’s assignment, the senior case officer, said to be O’Donnell, arrived in the Congo, took charge in a commanding tone, and vetoed Harvey’s plan.

6.6 CATCH AND KILL, NOVEMBER 19–DECEMBER 11, 1960

Covert operations are fluid events that adapt as realities on the ground change. When the senior case officer, said to be O’Donnell, arrived in Leopoldville to assess the situation, QJWIN was ordered to skip Dakar and travel directly to the Congo on the double. The new plan was to flush Lumumba out of his home and, therefore, out from under United Nations protection.

Upon QJWIN’s arrival in Leopoldville on November 19, the action was fast and furious. It took the superstar only six days to secure the use of four UN vehicles and a UN uniform, and to concoct the plan of posing as a “[redacted] officer” and “entering the target’s home [to] provide an escort out of the residence.” The day after that scheme was hatched, Lumumba made what appears to have been an escape along the same lines, raising the possibility that QJWIN’s strategy was a success. Leopoldville station informed headquarters about QJWIN’s plan and the news that Lumumba escaped in the same cable, praising the playmaker for “great initiative, imagination, and courage since arrival.”

Lumumba fled with his entourage by motorcade toward the distant city of Stanleyville, in the region that had birthed his political rise. But the agency feared that upon arrival in his welcoming city, he would quickly reconstitute his power. Knowing the clock was ticking, QJWIN offered to unilaterally take Lumumba out. From the cable to headquarters on November 29, 1960:

View change in location target, QJWIN anxious to go Stanleyville and expressed desire execute plan by himself without using any apparat.

Headquarters responded:

Concur QJWIN go to Stanleyville…. We are prepared consider direct action by QJWIN but would like reading on security factors. How close would this place [the United States] to the action?

The word action in the context of an assassination refers to the direct act of killing the target. Once again the CIA’s primary concern was distancing the United States from the murder. And one way to create that distance was to outsource the deed while facilitating its occurrence.

Lumumba’s caravan never reached Stanleyville. With the help of a surveillance plane loaned by a foreign ally, the motorcade was spotted and swarmed by troops under Mobutu, who had taken over in a bloodless coup just two months before. Mobutu was a Congolese colonel in America’s pocket and was a sworn enemy of Lumumba’s. It was Mobutu who had been assisting QJWIN with the breakout plan between November 20 and 26.

Lumumba was captured at midnight on December 1, 1960, and was carted back to Leopoldville, beaten, and thrown into jail in nearby Thysville. There he awaited the inevitable, which occurred in a Katangan field by firing squad on January 17, 1961. Lumumba’s executioners consisted of Belgian military officers, Katangan authorities, and mercenaries, or so the legend goes. QJWIN was long gone, having left Africa the month before.

Back at headquarters, William Harvey sat down at his typewriter on January 11, 1961, to summarize the mission and its success.

QJWIN was sent on this trip for a specific, highly sensitive operational purpose which has been completed.

Harvey penned that prophecy just days before Lumumba perished in an execution that delivered the measure of distance the agency had sought. The CIA completely denies a role in Patrice Lumumba’s demise.

6.7 JERRIE AND “JERI”

Jerrie Cobb told me June had “impersonated her” for a while, but I had developed a lot of evidence, including an eyewitness, indicating that it was Jerrie who had borrowed June’s persona. Now my timeline showed June with a hole in her movements while QJWIN was in Africa, after preparing for something her case officer described as “very important.” But it was Catherine Taaffe, the female arms dealer with the same modus operandi as Wanda Baran, who made me wonder if Jerrie, who bore Taaffe’s forearm scar, was the deep female agent lurking in QJWIN’s saga.

Deciphering false personas is a head-spinning exercise, but I had begun my quest because I knew a woman named Jerrie Cobb. So where was Jerrie in all this? And is there any evidence that she had ties to QJWIN or to QJWIN’s Congo operation?

Tanganyika Orders Two Aero Commanders

Jerrie Cobb’s first flight to Africa, in the spring of 1960, was among her most daring piloting adventures. By this time, she no longer ferried planes for Fleetways, and now was a marketing executive for Aero Commander, the aviation firm that manufactured the twin-engine business plane she flew. In April and May 1960, Jerrie piloted a new Aero Commander to Africa on a sales tour, a trip that coincided with Lumumba’s political rise and often found her inside the Belgian Congo or just outside its borders.

FIGURE 6E. Jerrie in Dar es Salaam, Tanganyika, where she left the plane at the end of her May 1960 trip.

That trip ended when she left the new Aero Commander with the Tanganyikan government, an American ally adjacent to the Congo’s province of Katanga. The plane she delivered had been specially outfitted in America for aerial surveillance. After making that delivery, she returned from Africa on May 19, 1960, six months before QJWIN’s Lumumba operations began.

But the Tanganyikan government didn’t order one new Aero Commander from her employer—it ordered two. Jerrie delivered the first plane in mid-May 1960, and six weeks later its tail number appeared on the British aircraft registry. Tanganyika’s second Aero Commander popped onto that same registry in February 1961, so if the lag between delivery and registry remained consistent, the second plane was delivered in mid-December 1960. That coincides with QJWIN’s departure from Africa at the end of the assassination mission.

Jerrie privately told me that she visited Africa on three separate occasions, all in the same time period, and all were for her “work.” But I was able to corroborate only her May 1960 trip through travel manifests and news clippings. So who delivered that second Aero Commander, and were Jerrie’s other African trips on classified missions?

“Jeri”

In the middle of QJWIN’s Congo assignment, on November 29, 1960, Rome station forwarded a dispatch to headquarters with leads to criminals for use in QJWIN’s program. Since QJWIN was originally supposed to look for Corsican criminals in the Dakar region, this list of criminal leads could have been intended to help network QJWIN into those circles. When the agency forwarded materials like this list, it often attached a routing slip, so everyone who saw the packet could sign off. This list was a document that very few people should see, but it was sent to William Harvey with attention to Arnold Silver. The only other person who we know should probably have seen it was QJWIN.

That routing slip is shown in Figure 6F, and atop that slip someone named “Jeri” wrote a handwritten message.

FIGURE 6F. The routing slip attached to QJWIN’s criminal list, signed by a person named “Jeri.”

Click here to view as text.

“Jeri” scribbled her message to “B,” probably to Bill Harvey, with information about who currently had the attachment, which was the list of criminals. Notice that Arnold Silver, QJWIN’s case officer, was also in the chain of custody of the list. “Jeri” handled the assassination program’s criminal list, and she had a vested interest in these materials. Jeri signed this routing slip at headquarters on or after December 20, 1960, which was after QJWIIN’s return from the African continent.

FIGURE 6G. Left: Signature of the “Jeri” who handled QJWIN’s criminal list. Right: Jerrie Cobb’s signature.

Figure 6G shows Jerrie Cobb’s signature compared to that of the “Jeri” who handled QJWIN’s list.

Jerrie Cobb’s Christmas Donation

After QJWIN’s return from Africa, Jerrie Cobb felt moved to send a sizable donation to the Mission Aviation Fellowship, a charity serving remote civilizations by air. Her Christmas gift of $500 was the equivalent of $5,000 today.

When James Truxton thanked Jerrie on behalf of the charity, the topic between them was the strife in the Congo and the battle “against the threats of Communism and other forces which would upset this nation on the very eve of its independence.” It was a concern that both the missionaries and the CIA shared.

The CIA agent named “Jeri” who signed QJWIN’s documents went forward with this team and would sign off on QJWIN’s materials a total of three times, once in each of QJWIN’s three major operational phases.

INTERLUDE 6

Ybor City

This period of my life wasn’t easy. Nor was I clear about how to handle my relationship with Jerrie. I worried about the risks of continuing my contact with her, a concern I constantly weighed against the fact that I seemed to be the only person in a position to find out more about her past. But continuing to engage her wasn’t just about unlocking her secrets. It was also about the historical significance of her actions. I believed she’d altered the course of history in ways that were not yet understood. If I didn’t investigate this, who would?

During our conversation at the manatees, Jerrie said she wanted to get to know me better, and traveling together was how she wanted to do it. Was she keeping her friends close and her enemies closer? The whole idea of traveling with her scared me. I decided to go anyway.

For our first trip, Jerrie booked a cruise package on the internet, and while cruises weren’t my style, things would go better if I just flowed with her currents. The route she chose was provocative. After boarding near her home in Tampa, we would sail across the Gulf to Mexico and disembark into the country where June Cobb had been stationed with the CIA for five years. We would be bunking together in a cramped cabin for a full week.

Ruth Lummis, Jerrie’s elderly but surprisingly sturdy companion, would be traveling with us, as she would on all our journeys. When we were working together on the space film, Jerrie had always described Ruth as her friend or her roommate, but by now I knew Ruth was much more important to her than that. Without Ruth, Jerrie would have been lost. Ruth was her protector, and her arms and legs when she was weak. She was also her loyal watchdog—and, I now realized, she had been keeping a wary eye on me all along. Ruth knew how to deliver a good stink eye if I asked Jerrie a question that was too probing. When it came to vacation reading, she became immersed in a tome on General Erwin Rommel’s tank maneuvers in World War II, an interest she must have developed during her own service as a WAC in the Korean War.

Jerrie and Ruth were both veteran cruisers, having circumnavigated the globe by sea at least once. They liked to spend the night before departure at a hotel near the dock, so we traveled into Tampa’s port region before dusk. That night Jerrie wanted me to experience Ybor City, so we ventured out into the glorious evening for a stroll. Ybor City markets itself as a slice of Cuba that you can visit without a passport because the Florida seaport had assimilated the spirit of the people whose wares flowed from ship to shore. On this balmy night, the sun cast long shadows down an avenue that wouldn’t come to life until long after two eightysomethings would be fast asleep. Still, I sensed there had been a day when Jerrie didn’t turn in so early, and it was those unspoken memories that swirled in the evening breeze.

As we ambled by the storefronts, Jerrie gazed into a cigar shop window in a stop that was engineered to catch her breath. At the door, a cartoonish bust of a grinning Castro welcomed shoppers, but her face betrayed nothing as she ignored it. She’d spoken so freely to me about Cuba in our space interviews, but I’d impatiently rerouted those conversations back to the space quest. Now I wanted a do-over, because after I confronted her about being June, her colorful stories about Cuba had evaporated. I can only call up fragments now, but they involved daring landings on remote fields and beaches. Were they rice fields? Sugar fields? And why the pressured landings? I’ll never stop kicking myself for not asking.

As the evening glow beckoned us farther down the boulevard, Jerrie grew tired and needed more frequent sit-downs to muster her strength. I suggested we turn back, but she fixed her steely will and said we needed to find a favorite restaurant. Every block teemed with fabulous bistros, and I suggested we find one that was closer. Nyet. This restaurant served an incredible Cuban black bean soup, she said, and I just had to taste it this evening or, evidently, we would die trying. She struggled to her feet with eyes locked downstream and worried aloud about how much farther the place was. I offered to check my phone but was instructed to stand down. This restaurant could be found only by feel.

I tried to make small talk about Cuba since we were immersed in it, but it wasn’t on the conversational menu. Jerrie was sitting and resting every half-block now and stressing about how many more blocks it would be. Block by block, we picked our way, and block by block, I worried about how we were going to get her back. I was also praying we weren’t on a wild-goose chase for a restaurant that was long since shuttered, or worse, one that had changed its soup recipe in the fifty years since her last visit. I again suggested that any one of these places would do, but once again, I was ignored.

Finally she spotted it, and not a moment too soon. The last block was an exhaustion. I was starting to see why she liked it, though. The streetscape was inlaid with colorful tiles, and as we walked under the arched balconies, we strolled back into the 1960s. The building hadn’t lost its midcentury authenticity, a rare sight in a state that had shed its skin every decade since my childhood visit in 1964.

Jerrie homed in on a spacious garden room with ambient light filtered through a tropical canopy and made a beeline for a certain table. We were woefully underdressed for a place that called for business casual at a minimum. Jerrie had about three outfits, all of which came from the discount sweatshirt table at Costco. In spite of our mismatch, a cheerful waitress came over to take our drink order, but for Jerrie and Ruth, it was water only. We’d come all this way, and I was wondering if they would even eat.

We ordered the soup. It came. I brought up Cuba. Jerrie said nothing. I asked when she used to come here. “During the space years. ’Sixty and ’sixty-one.” Had she been here since? “No.” Had Ruth ever been here? “No, but I’ve heard the stories.” I wished I could hear the stories. My god, was this how our entire trip was going to go?

As we sat there not conversing, I had a lot of time to flip through my mental Rolodex on June Cobb. I couldn’t remember June having any connection to Tampa, but this entire evening oozed Cuba. The walk home went more smoothly than the struggle to arrive, but if the idea had been for us to get to know each other better, we were off to a bad start. I filed away the Columbia Restaurant in Ybor City and made a mental note to look it up when I got home. Maybe she’d left me some sort of clue.

She had. When I searched for “Columbia Restaurant” in the JFK Assassination Records database, it turned up 675 hits. That’s because mobster Santos Trafficante, Jr., was once a daily fixture at the Columbia, and his files were part of the JFK Assassination Records because he’d helped the CIA with its plot to assassinate Fidel Castro.

The stories about Trafficante’s involvement conflict, but he later told Congress that he’d served as a translator for agency officers while they lined up couriers to smuggle in poison pills to the chosen assassin. Other versions imply that Trafficante loaned the agency the use of his couriers. Either way, he acted as a facilitator between the agency and the couriers, and he admitted that he knew the chosen assassin, Juan Orta. So did June Cobb.

But Trafficante’s intersections with June didn’t stop there. The mobster lived in Cuba throughout the 1950s, where he owned several glitzy casinos and had Cuba’s heroin market cornered. Those were the same years when June Cobb’s fiancé, Rafael Herran, was also in the heroin trade, working his sales turf in Cuba. Herran and his brother manufactured the opiate in South America and trafficked it into Havana, often with June by their side.

That’s a lot of overlap between Cobb and Trafficante. Heroin smuggling and drug running to Cuba, working with the CIA against Castro, and both acquainted with the chosen assassin. I was now wondering which table at the Columbia had been the mobster’s special office and whether Jerrie had pointedly selected it for our silent black bean soup repast.

SEVEN

Castro

7.1 THROWING SWITCHES, DECEMBER 1960

Recruiting an assassin should be done delicately. The person suggesting the job must be trusted by the potential assassin. Then there is the matter of striking the right tone. It would also be a good idea to understand what the potential assassin might want to get out of the deal. There are so many things to consider, which was why, upon her return after QJWIN’s African mission, June Cobb and her case officer began a long back-and-forth trying to nail down Cobb’s recruiting pitch to Juan Orta.

Orta ultimately accepted the job of delivering poison pills into Castro’s gullet, in what historians now agree was the United States’s most significant attempt on the leader’s life. Orta’s well-documented scheme against Castro was meant to work in concert with the agency’s other plan to unseat the bearded leader—the Cuban exile attack at the Bay of Pigs in the spring of 1961, a coup attempt by proxy. Orta received the agency’s deadly pills in the weeks leading up to that invasion. Both plots were initiated by the Eisenhower administration, and both would fatefully be inherited by Kennedy, becoming his most catastrophic failure.

But the history books don’t describe June Cobb’s involvement in this overthrow saga, because when the CIA officers who were involved in the planning later went before Congress, they told a version of the story that completely omitted her role. In their version, it was CIA-connected mobsters who selected Orta as Castro’s assassin, and it was also the mob who delivered the poison pills to him. But as I discovered by piecing together the narrative threads in Cobb’s CIA file, it was June who actually approached Orta to do the agency’s bidding, as memorialized in dozens of real-time CIA communications showing her approaching Orta and forging a delivery channel to him.

Like this passage written on December 21, 1960, where Cobb (whose cryptonym AMUPAS referenced a deadly poison) proposed using Orta for covert action:

You know, he [Orta] just might be in the underground down there. In that case perhaps he should not be so much urged to exit. Imagine what a tremendous position he is in, for throwing switches, literally and figuratively, at the proper time!

What Cobb was describing—Orta staying in place to take actions beneficial to America at the proper time—is exactly what happened in the weeks and months after she suggested it. Poison pills were couriered from Miami to Orta in Havana, in an assassination plot that was engineered to coincide with the Bay of Pigs. The known events, as they unfolded, fit well with Cobb’s suggestion, indicating that the idea of Orta “throwing switches” had originated with her, not with the mob. The maneuver Cobb suggested, staying in place to conduct covert action, is called “defecting in place” and is one of the most highly prized achievements in the annals of espionage.

June Cobb already knew Orta, and it was their history together that put her in the perfect position to suggest that he take on actions that would betray Fidel Castro. But before we delve into Cobb’s Orta approach, let’s take a moment to piece together the fractured parts of Cobb’s Castro operation and try to form a more complete picture.

In my timeline, as we have seen, June Cobb appears immediately after Catherine Taaffe exits, almost seamlessly picking up on the work of undermining Castro. If Taaffe and Cobb were the same agent under two different guises, then June’s approach to Orta was not a cold pitch out of the blue but rather an appeal to a fellow associate in the anti-Castro underground.

Notice that, in the passage quoted above, Cobb wondered whether Orta “might be in the underground,” as if she weren’t sure. If Cobb was Taaffe, then she had been monitoring the anti-Castro underground since early 1959 and knew exactly who was in it. Taaffe made what I believe was one of the earliest documented records of a conversation about assassinating Castro in July 1959:

Taaffe advised that the opposition groups are convinced that in order to save many hundreds of lives in Cuba, the Castro brothers, Raul and Fidel, must be eliminated.

So who was in the opposition groups that Taaffe reported wanted Castro dead? Possibly Juan Orta. One of Taaffe’s best sources in the Cuban government was said to be a senior leader at INRA, the Institute of Agrarian Reform, a position that Orta held. Furthermore, Taaffe and Orta were both embroiled in a kidnapping plot targeting Rolando Masferrer, a military leader who fled Cuba and whom Castro considered a threat. When Taaffe was unable to return to Cuba in late January 1960 after reporting that plot to the FBI, June Cobb soon resumed the flow of reporting coming out of INRA, with Orta as her major source.

If June Cobb and Catherine Taaffe were names used by the same female spy, then Cobb’s fresh recruitment into the CIA would be a useful cover story to conceal her long and storied tenure with the agency. By recruiting her under an alias, Cobb’s file would appear to be that of a fledgling agent, while in reality she maintained her old contacts. Not only would this tactic obscure her history, it would disguise what she was about to do. But her code name AMUPAS, assigned to her upon recruitment, was a poker tell that a poisoning was in her future. This is what I think we are seeing when we look at June’s CIA 201 file—a partial, fictional file crafted to obscure the agency’s burgeoning assassination program and its star agent.

The inaccurate portrayal of Orta in Cobb’s file supports the idea that her file spins a false narrative about them both. “Dr. Orta,” as June called him, is unfailingly depicted in her file as an intellectual paper-pusher who was merely Fidel Castro’s administrative assistant. When Cobb was recruited into the CIA, the agency exhibited no concern whatsoever that she was working closely with Orta; nor did it challenge her description of him as a dignified bureaucrat.

Meanwhile, over at FBI headquarters, cabinets were bulging with documents pegging Orta as an action-oriented rebel who was no stranger to moving guns and personnel through Miami and around the Caribbean. U.S. law enforcement was well aware that Orta ran Castro’s intelligence network in Miami. The Justice Department had a long rap sheet on Orta, including perjury and gun-running charges, although the feds let him off easy when they had the chance to put him behind bars, in a December 1959 ruling that the press described as a “Christmas gift.” Even readers of The New York Times knew Orta had been indicted for engineering an illegal plane flight to Miami, an international flap that was making headlines while the agency was hiring Cobb.

So why was Orta portrayed as such a milquetoast figure throughout Cobb’s CIA file? Perhaps for the same reason that June Cobb is portrayed as such a milquetoast figure. Orta and Cobb were the radioactive ground zero in an assassination operation. The CIA had no bigger secret than this program, which goes a long way toward explaining why Cobb’s file, and the Orta story in particular, is filled with misinformation and misdirections: for deniability.

Both Taaffe and Cobb wanted Castro gone. Catherine Taaffe was known to talk about it. June Cobb was ready to get the job done.

7.2 COBB ENLISTS ORTA: “IT SHOULD SOUND LIKE ME,” LATE 1960–EARLY 1961

When June was first recruited into the agency, early CIA memos touted her access to the Cuban government through Juan Orta and INRA, the Institute of Agrarian Reform. While I question the veracity of much of June’s file, the facts that she knew Orta and that her connection to him was valuable to the CIA cannot be denied. Years later Orta even admitted that he worked with June Cobb in Cuba, although he said she didn’t work directly with Castro, as documents in her CIA file claim.

But by the fall of 1960, Cobb’s overtures to Orta were no longer welcome. By then, Castro’s intelligence services suspected she was a spy, and Orta couldn’t accept her calls because Havana’s phone lines were notoriously tapped. In light of that barrier, June’s case officer, Jean Pierson, gave her the following assignment:

[Cobb] was requested to prepare as detailed a sketch as possible on “Juan” ORTA and get it in the mail by 1pm today; it will be picked up by OS [Office of Security] and forwarded soonest. This sketch will be used as a basis for preparing a letter to ORTA urging him to defect. [Cobb] was requested to suggest ways in which the letter to ORTA and one to MARIA [Witowska] could be forwarded securely.

June popped her Orta sketch in the mail on November 9, 1960, just days before starting her “hibernation” while QJWIN was in Africa. Four weeks later, upon resumption of case officer contacts, Cobb floated the idea of Orta staying in place in Havana to throw switches, and in that same memo, Cobb explained to her case officer the importance of concealing from Orta her status with the CIA:

Now, what is very important is that he should never suspect that I am in touch with whoever you [the case officer] are. It is excellent for me to seem to have been contacted by the 26th of July opposition [Cobb then listed several anti-Castro groups] because in this way I am working WITH CUBANS FOR CUBA.

Notice how Cobb, who’d been with the agency for only six months, was explaining to her career case officer the importance of crafting her pitch to Orta to conceal the agency’s hand. The switches Orta was about to throw could leave no schematics that would link his actions back to the United States.

Next, Cobb considered how to best play to Orta’s sympathies.

I know him well enough to know that prestige, self respect, and the feeling that he is respected by others and associating with the best of people, is much more important to him than material concerns.

Cobb then typed up sections of her letter to Orta in Spanish and supplied her case officer with a translation. The surviving document is not the final letter but rather a draft they were still refining. While Cobb was open to suggestions, one component needed to remain intact. She told her case officer not to correct her Spanish.

It should sound like me.

Here is the entire surviving draft of Cobb’s recruitment letter to Juan Orta. It is both incomplete and marked as a version that wasn’t used.

As a family man it is hard to face exile again, with all that that implies. But suffice to say for the sake of your own children it is important to stop the process, now in motion, to deprive them of their personal liberties. Men of ideals and principles, getting together, now to protest, before things get any worse, can try to get things back on track and carry on the true revolution, which could be an inspiration for the whole world.

Your friends have told me you can count on passage for your family as soon as you are in an embassy—anyone whatsoever—they would cooperate with you in providing funds to support you in the country to which you would go after leaving the embassy, and then bringing you here if you want to come. At least you could count on schooling for your children. They say they are organizing a means of placing professional people so they won’t have to work in humble jobs.

No one presumes for one moment that it is easy to do this. But believe me it is easy for me to write this. All in keeping with the spirit of the 26th of July.

I have sat down to write the letter because you know me, you know that I feel like one of you and am desperate to know what to do, but now I am convinced, my respected friend, that I, like you, am better off here among friends who have asked me to write to you than among those well intentioned ones (and some not so well intentioned) who have changed Cuba so much in the course of one year—from one Christmas to another!

Cobb’s letter appears to be urging a defection, yet so many elements of the assassination plot and its aftermath were in place in Cobb’s proposal. Orta followed Cobb’s instructions to a tee. After his attempt to poison Castro failed, he defected to the Venezuelan embassy, then traveled to Mexico, after which he quietly joined his family, who were awaiting him in the United States. If Cobb’s letter had been a simple invitation to defect, there would have been no reason to go to other embassies and other countries—the CIA was orchestrating exfiltrations to the United States directly, which were seen as propaganda wins. Furthermore, the CIA didn’t normally send cold letters to Castro loyalists hoping for defections. They were too busy exfiltrating allies who had turned against Fidel and were now in danger, like those whisked to Florida by AMCOO in late 1959. Cobb’s proposal of a circuitous route to other countries suggests a defection that was avoiding Orta being seen as running right into America’s arms.

Cobb also suggested Orta’s actions could “stop the process, now in motion.” It was a tall order for a defection but a perfect fit for a defection in place, where Orta could be used for covert action. Cobb bluntly asked him to shoulder great sacrifice, one she knew wouldn’t be easy. Further suggesting that her letter was a part of the assassination recruitment, Cobb’s case officer later recorded that along with the letter, Orta would be offered $20,000 to $40,000 for his “cooperation.” That’s a $250,000 to $400,000 payday when adjusted for inflation, on top of his family being cared for.

Of course, it would have been disastrous if Cobb and Pierson had been paying Orta handsomely to perform a simple defection at the exact same time another CIA division was using Orta to try to assassinate Castro. So when you read Cobb’s letter to Orta, which is incomplete and unfinished, you can either believe that the CIA was so inept that it was accidentally asking its assassin to defect before killing the target, or you can believe that Cobb’s overture to Orta was central to the plot itself.

Readers who have studied the Castro assassination attempts will be surprised to learn of Cobb’s involvement here, because the agency’s story was that mobsters recruited Juan Orta, then delivered the poison pills to him. In an operation that was engineered to be denied, it should be no surprise that there are different renditions of the tale.

Before we examine the documents revealing that it was Cobb who orchestrated the CIA’s delivery to Orta during his assassination attempt, let’s pause and learn more about how the CIA characterized its relationship with the mob. When two stories differ, there’s often a kernel of truth in both. Cobb’s delivery to Orta can come into focus only if we understand the admissions that senior CIA officers later made to Congress—and what they lied about under oath to protect.

7.3 THE MOB DID IT

In the mid-1970s, as Americans grew increasingly concerned about intelligence abuses conducted in their name, the Senate formed the Church Committee to bring these dark operations to light. One by one, senior CIA officers stepped forward to testify to the committee, and one by one, those claiming to be in charge of America’s assassination program omitted the role played by June Cobb.

Here is the testimony of Security Officer James O’Connell, the man who took credit for managing the Castro assassination plot, on how the agency recruited Juan Orta:

Initially they, [mobster Johnny] Roselli and company, approached a man who was in Cuba by the name of Juan Orta. And Orta was supposedly in good with Castro, he was actually one of the members of his cabinet—I don’t know whether that is true or not either but that is the story I got.

O’Connell acted as if he didn’t know much about Orta, but his department, the Office of Security, a division that protects the CIA’s sensitive operations, hand-delivered Cobb’s biographical sketch on Orta to headquarters after she drafted it. O’Connell claimed that Johnny Roselli and his mobster friends approached Orta, but as I’ve shown, June Cobb contacted Orta on behalf of the CIA. O’Connell then echoed the fairy tale that Orta was simply a cabinet-level bureaucrat, when articles in The New York Times and federal indictments against Orta proved otherwise.

O’Connell represented himself to the Church Committee as the point person on the CIA’s Orta plot, yet clearly he didn’t tell Congress the whole story. Still, rather than toss out everything he said as false, let’s listen closely for synchronicities to actions that we know Cobb took. Here is the rest of the CIA Office of Security’s story about the Orta assassination plot, composited from the testimonies of the officers who claimed responsibility for orchestrating it.

The Office of Security’s Mob Recruitment Story

Sheffield Edwards, chief of the Security Office, testified that Richard Bissell, the deputy director of plans, handed his department the job of killing Castro, even though this was far outside his office’s purview. Let’s remember the types of tasks we’ve seen the Office of Security do so far in this book. They are routine actions, like ordering a new Social Security number for June Cobb; checking to see if June and Jerrie had any relationship; delivering June’s evaluation of Orta to headquarters; and surveilling June Cobb’s hotel room and bugging her phone. These are all actions to protect CIA operations. But suddenly, we are to believe that the Office of Security was wading into an assassination on foreign soil.

Edwards then passed the buck to his underling, O’Connell, who had no intelligence network inside Cuba and no experience running a covert attack. O’Connell claimed he then enlisted the help of private eye and agency part-timer Robert Maheu, who suggested that the mob would be a good partner in the plot, since they disliked Castro for shuttering their casinos. With that as their reasoning, O’Connell and Maheu started working with Las Vegas mobster Johnny Roselli, using him as a conduit to recruit even more mob support.

Roselli quickly brought on board the Chicago mobster Sam Giancana and Tampa’s top hoodlum, Santos Trafficante. Giancana was the most powerful mobster in America, and Trafficante controlled the drug routes from Florida to Cuba. These criminals then suggested Orta as an assassin, and the CIA went to work manufacturing the poison pills for the job. With private eye Maheu giving the agency a measure of distance by managing the mobsters, Trafficante volunteered the use of his smuggling network into Cuba, and Giancana offered to personally deliver the pills to Orta.

On or about March 12, 1961, a seminal meeting occurred between O’Connell, Maheu, Roselli, Trafficante, and Giancana at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami. At that meeting, in some versions of the tale, a Cuban courier of Trafficante’s named Rafael Gener was to be the channel to Orta. In other versions, Sam Giancana accepted the pills and agreed to travel to Cuba to find Orta. In the end, Orta was said to have gotten “cold feet” and defected to the Venezuelan embassy without accomplishing the mission.

While there are several variations of the story, key aspects that never waver are:

The mob delivered the pills to Orta.

The pills were given to the mobsters by the CIA in Miami on about March 12, 1961.

Orta agreed to deliver the dose to Castro.

This story derives mostly from the testimony of the CIA officers because the mobsters kept getting murdered, dramatically impacting the historical record. Giancana was the first to be killed, shot in the head on June 19, 1975, by someone he invited into his home not long before his first Church Committee appearance was scheduled. Roselli’s testimony was ongoing at the time of his demise and tracked closely with that of the CIA officers. But on August 9, 1976, not long after his third congressional session, his corpse was found stuffed in a barrel, fueling rumors the murder was payback for something he said.

Trafficante testified three times, but his story was suppressed through a combination of classification and omission. Perhaps that’s because he claimed he barely knew Orta, hadn’t recommended him for the job, and hadn’t helped with the poison pill deliveries—all of which contradicted the CIA inspector general’s report of 1967. According to Trafficante, Johnny Roselli claimed to be a representative of the CIA and then merely asked him to sit in on a few meetings as a translator.

With Giancana dead, Trafficante disregarded, and Roselli, a close ally of the agency, also dead, the Office of Security’s version went unchallenged. Unchallenged, that is, until you compare that version to the CIA’s own internal documents. There the challenge begins.

I have found no real-time paper trail—meaning zero communications, memos, cables, or dispatches dated before Orta’s defection—that supports the Office of Security’s claim that it was running the Orta plot or that it orchestrated the pill deliveries to Havana. The Security Office started telling that story only after the assassination attempt failed.

Meanwhile, the June Cobb file is loaded with documents recording her integral role in the Orta operation, from the fall of 1960 up through Orta’s defection and beyond. Over seventy pages of concurrently dated documents outline how Cobb and her case officer managed the construction of biographical sketches on Orta, suggested his defection in place for covert action, planned how to approach him, gamed out the costs, explored channels for a delivery to him, and then executed that delivery. They even monitored his defection, after which they ran a postgame analysis on what had gone wrong. The real-time record couldn’t be more clear. June Cobb and her case officer ran the Orta operation.

Now that we understand the Office of Security’s story, let’s resume our look at the real-time document trail as it unfolds within the June Cobb file.

7.4 COBB’S DELIVERY TO ORTA, MARCH 1961

As we have seen, June Cobb’s initial assignment, given to her in November 1960, included the following instructions:

Subj [Cobb] was requested to suggest ways in which the letter to ORTA and one to MARIA [Witowska] could be forwarded securely.

Cobb was asked to propose a secure delivery channel to Orta. Of course, once you’ve developed a secure pathway for a letter, you’ve also established a delivery channel for some pills. June’s drug-smuggling connections through her fiancé, Rafael Herran, and his heroin routes into Cuba were the kinds of associations that would now become useful.

Cobb immediately turned to her “taxi stand” group in Havana, a highly trusted cadre of allies who had the ability to reach Orta through his co-worker Maria Witowska. These taxi connections pop up suddenly in the narrative told in Cobb’s file, but they obviously date back to her days working covertly in Cuba against Castro. Supposedly, through their work at a taxi stand, these contacts had access to passengers with whom they could clandestinely communicate. Cobb’s point man in the taxi group wrote letters to her using the name “Rafael Gesto,” and it was through “Gesto” and his network that Cobb solidified her delivery channel to Orta.

“Rafael Gesto” was the first of several shadowy figures in Cobb’s Orta delivery chain who struck me as having a name similar to a counterpart in the mob delivery saga. In this instance, “Rafael Gesto” sounded a lot like Rafael Gener, Trafficante’s associate, who in some versions of the story was said to have couriered deliveries. It wasn’t just their names that were similar; it was that they played the exact same role in the two synchronous stories. “Gesto” and Gener both were Havana residents who became middlemen in the delivery chain from the CIA to Orta, with both having the first name Rafael and the initials R.G. But more important, they assumed the identical assignments at the exact same time.

The CIA’s Field Double Agent Guide, drafted in August 1960 during the height of June’s operations, explicitly states that when double agents are in the field, they should supplement their in-person meetings with their case officer with other communications that use open code. The Cubans thought Cobb was working for them when she really worked for the CIA, so she was a double agent. Furthermore, Cobb’s CIA file specifies that she was involved in possible double agent operations in both Cuba and Eastern Europe. So we can surmise that when we are looking at her written and telephonic communications with Jean Pierson, many of these communications are deploying open code.

Open code is an age-old technique in which spies communicate using shared references in a hastily established code that requires no codebook. If two agents needed a code to speak about Woodward and Bernstein, the reporters who broke the Watergate story, all they’d need to do is substitute the names “Elmwood” and “Rubinstein,” and they’d have established the code. For example, if one spy reported that “Elmwood” recently got information from his contact with the funny voice, you’d know that Woodward just got new information from his source Deep Throat. This method doesn’t even require a warning to expect the code, and once established, it can be used repeatedly.

Another example: If we know mobster Sam Giancana has been enlisted to deliver poison pills to Cuba, a reference to any person named “Sam” making deliveries would get the job done as a code for him. With this technique in mind, and knowing that the players discussed may be coded, let’s resume the Cobb delivery saga.

June Cobb Lines Up Her Channel to Orta, January–March 1961

Cobb began lining up her channel to Orta by taking a trip to Caracas, Venezuela, in late January 1961. Her male case officer, Harry Hermsdorf, had previously used Caracas as a point from which he could securely communicate to Maria Witowska, who worked closely with Orta in Havana. Cobb was apparently using Caracas similarly. Cubans could travel freely there without suspicion, and while Cobb ostensibly made the trip to meet with the ex-president of Guatemala, who was the author of The Shark and the Sardines, she also conducted interviews on the Caracas University campus during her weeklong stay from January 21 to 28. She then wound up extending her trip an extra twelve days, and where she was from January 28 to February 8 is anybody’s guess.

On February 5, “Rafael Gesto” of the Havana taxi group wrote a letter to Cobb at her New York address, confirming his receipt of a recent delivery she’d sent him. Obviously, June had managed to make contact with the taxi group on her trip, but that wasn’t all she accomplished. When she returned to New York, she brought back a handwritten slip from her taxi friends to be used as a recognition signal: when carried by a new person, the slip would prove that person was sent by Cobb. Cobb’s case officer described how this recognition signal would work by saying the slip “could be used to identify an individual having a note to be delivered to Maria Witowska or Juan Orta.” Bingo. Cobb now had a pathway for a delivery to Orta.

Once Cobb solidified the delivery channel, she was ready to use it, and the person she sent in with deliveries for Orta was her new friend named “Sam.” From the notes made by her case officer, Jean Pierson:

February 23, 1961 [Pierson’s notes from phone call with Cobb]

Cobb had been introduced…to Samuel Freedman…. Freedman is planning a trip to Cuba about the first of March…. She will also give him a note of introduction to Maria WITOWSKA and Juan ORTA.

According to Pierson’s notes, “Sam Freedman” [sic] was a socialist author from New York City, and there was a well-known socialist author named Sam Friedman who fits the accompanying biography in the Cobb file. However, I have discovered other instances where Pierson borrowed an existing person’s name for coded communications with Cobb that were actually coming from headquarters. I’ve even uncovered a memo where Pierson cleared the use of other people’s names through the Office of Security before she used them in what she referred to as Cobb’s “commo channel.”

Now we have a “Sam Freedman,” who suddenly appears in Cobb’s delivery saga, and his movements line up beautifully to mobster Sam Giancana, who, in O’Connell’s version of the story, agreed to deliver the pills to Orta. With all these conflicting stories, open codes, and aliases, it’s hard to say who was making a poison pill delivery to Orta—but one thing is crystal clear. June Cobb and her case officer absolutely were making a delivery to Orta for the CIA, and they were doing so at the exact same time that O’Connell told Congress he had a network of mobsters doing it, but he did not mention June Cobb.

March 1, 1961 [Pierson’s notes on Cobb contact]

Contact was made with Cobb at 9:45am this date. She was instructed to forward a detailed sketch covering all possible details on the ORTA family as soon as possible.

Cobb informed CO [case officer] that she was to meet Sam FREEDMAN today to give him names, addresses and letters of introduction to a number of people who might be of assistance to him in his trip to Cuba.

Notice that Cobb was coordinating information on Orta’s family, just days before the known timeline for the poison pill delivery in mid-March. In the following memo, “Sam Freedman’s” trip to Cuba was all set.

March 9, 1961 [notes made by Jean Pierson]

In a telephonic conversation with COBB this date, she informed me that Sam FREEDMAN is leaving Sunday for a two week stay in Habana on behalf of the Socialist Call to prepare an article on Cuba.

The Sunday when Cobb’s “Sam Freedman” was to depart for Cuba was March 12, 1961. That was the very day the Church Committee later estimated that the poison pills were given to the mobsters for delivery to Orta, based on the various testimonies it had heard.

To state the obvious here, it would make no sense for the CIA to have had two delivery channels running to Orta at the same time—one for assassination-related deliveries, and one for some unrelated delivery that Cobb and her case officer accidentally conjured up. Cobb’s delivery channel to Orta was the channel for either the assassination pills and all that entailed, or an important communication to Orta related to that plot.

March 27, 1961 [Pierson notes from telephone call from Cobb]

A call from Sam FREEDMAN indicated that he is having a fine time with Fidel. He also mentioned that the Chief of the Nicaraguan rebels in Habana—from COBB’s double talk, I gather she meant Alejandro MARTINEZ, brother of Harold MARTINEZ, Stasha’s paramour, is now in jail.

A member of Cobb’s network suddenly going to jail is not what you want to hear when you are conducting an assassination-related delivery. Once trouble erupted, Cobb’s case officer Pierson had to swiftly contact her higher-ups, and as a result of the urgency, Pierson inadvertently gave away the farm. She sent the entire file up the chain of command to the senior officer she was answering to, and she directly named him in this memo.

March 29, 1961 [Jean Pierson memo to William Harvey][emphasis added]

1) This file contains the entire AMDOFF/1 [Juan Orta] operation to date. We have not received word as yet that the letter has been delivered.

2)…Attach[ment] #1 is information from a source presently in New York City, who will be residing in Cambridge, Mass., after this week. [June Cobb was in New York and soon traveling to Cambridge.] If you are interested in further debriefing of source, we will be happy to arrange it.

Jean Pierson and June Cobb were directly answering to William Harvey, QJWIN’s boss and the architect of the assassination program. Pierson even offered Harvey a debriefing with Cobb. We’ve just seen June Cobb do something we never see QJWIN do: planning an approach and then making a delivery to an assassin the CIA admitted it mobilized against America’s number-one target. And she did so while she and her case officer were working under William Harvey’s oversight.

FIGURE 7A. Orta defection clipping, from June Cobb’s CIA file.

Cobb carefully cut out the clipping from Orta’s defection and sent it back for her file. Not surprisingly, there were no notes from Cobb’s debriefing with Harvey, if it ever happened. We are left combing for crumbs in the Cobb file for what went wrong on the Orta mission.

May 3, 1961 [notes from Jean Pierson]

Cobb received word through Sam FREEDMAN upon his return from Cuba, that Maria WITOWSKA is working for Revolucion.

Revolución was a pro-Castro magazine in Cuba, but it was also the term for Castro’s revolution itself. The open code is suggesting that Witowska was the problem. Another report written by Cobb supports the same conclusion.

5/61

Since I could not do it very well from Rose’s house, I never did have a real talk with Sam Friedman [sic] about his trip. However, from Stasha I learned he was asked to leave. Politely but firmly. He said he could not find Dr. Orta. Naturally not….

He also located Maria W. She was working nights at Revolucion. However, he may just have found her working there at night, and she may really be employed daytime. Apparently, Maria was friendly. She offered to do something for him with regard to her husband. He also looked up Gregorio. It seems Gregorio was not too obliging.

As soon as I get back to New York, I will get together with Friedman in order to learn his reports on all the other little letters etc. that I gave him.

Could Cobb’s “Sam” be code for Sam Giancana, and could “Rose” be code for Johnny Roselli? Roselli was the CIA’s middleman in lining up other mobsters, and since he was under constant FBI surveillance, sensitive conversations would be impossible to have at his home, just as Cobb described. Or did Cobb really send in a socialist author with the CIA’s special delivery for Orta? We’ll never know, because the agency never acknowledged June Cobb’s role during the congressional inquiries.

What we do know is that June Cobb worked on the Orta operation for William Harvey. She managed a covert delivery to the chosen assassin at the same moment he was receiving the poison pills, and if my open-code-breaking is correct, she was working with Johnny Roselli and Sam Giancana in the process. Killing Castro was the number-one objective of America’s assassination program, and Castro was the program’s only remaining target.

So while June Cobb was working for QJWIN’s boss and doing QJWIN’s job, where on earth was QJWIN?

7.5 WHERE WAS QJWIN?

QJWIN Spots Criminals in Europe, January–March 1961

Six weeks after QJWIN’s return from Africa, Harvey summoned his star for a new assignment. QJWIN was told to prepare for a scouting trip in Europe to spot criminals for the program, and QJWIN’s departure was set for late January ’61.

But before QJWIN took off, Harvey implemented a new rule: this team would no longer be making contact with local stations while QJWIN was traveling. And that’s a shame, because almost everything we know about the Congo mission was from communications between headquarters and Africa. Now there would be no paper trail to follow. This new modus operandi left only one way for QJWIN to be contacted, instructed, and paid from this point forward. Harvey would have to cable the station chief in Luxembourg, who in turn would relay instructions and payments to QJWIN.

Of course, by 1961, almost everyone in the industrialized world had a telephone, and those telephones could make international calls. Under the new arrangement, couldn’t QJWIN have simply phoned Luxembourg to receive instructions, and couldn’t the payments have been forwarded elsewhere, opening up the possibility that QJWIN could be anywhere? Perhaps even in Miami or the Caribbean, targeting America’s number-one foe?

Calling QJWIN

This type of telephoning arrangement is strongly suggested during several incidents during QJWIN’s tenure. QJWIN’s prearranged telephone contacts with Luxembourg were a factor in the inability to speed up the agent’s departure for Africa in the fall of 1960. Months later, Luxembourg assured headquarters that QJWIN didn’t even know where the station chief worked, implying that QJWIN wasn’t a local. But the phoning arrangement was all but spelled out when QJWIN was let go in the spring of 1964, when Luxembourg assured headquarters that the outside phone line QJWIN called in on was being dismantled.

Deftly placing this assassination program over in Europe, where no assassinations occurred, would make a deniable program that much more easily denied. The tactic would create a parallel track through which the agent could be paid and instructed, while laying down proof for posterity that no crimes had ever occurred. This sophisticated deception would be worth its weight in gold.

It would also leave the intrepid investigator with only one way to unspool it. You would need to identify the real QJWIN, meticulously detail their movements, and match them up to the instructions and payments that headquarters cabled to Luxembourg.

QJWIN and Cobb’s Twin Trips, January 28–February 8, 1961

In mid-January 1961, Luxembourg got word via a series of cables that QJWIN was needed for a “one to two” week trip to search for “the same types QJWIN was to find [in] DAKAR.” June Cobb was already planning her trip to Venezuela when Luxembourg received those instructions. She was scheduled to go to Caracas from January 21 to 28, but after QJWIN received that assignment, she decided to extend her trip another twelve days.

Where June went from January 28 to February 8 is unclear, but on February 9 she flew from Caracas to Puerto Rico and mailed her case officer a letter that remains in her file. QJWIN’s trip to “Milan” matches up beautifully to Cobb’s trip extension: QJWIN’s journey started on January 28 and wrapped up on February 8, the day before Cobb returned to American soil.

But it wasn’t just the dates of their trips that coincided; it’s what they accomplished. Cobb’s most pressing assignment at the time was lining up her taxi stand smugglers and arranging for their deliveries to Orta. After her trip, she came away with a recognition signal on a slip of paper, so her taxi friends would recognize the next person she sent in with a delivery. Now listen to the instructions for QJWIN’s mission:

[QJWIN was told to find suitable criminal candidates and then] Set up a means of contact with them during February with recognition signals. FYI we will send someone else for this purpose.

Like June Cobb’s trip, QJWIN’s trip was successful, and a recognition signal was established so someone could recontact the recruit. But as so often happened on QJWIN’s missions, the bench-warming criminal wound up sipping coffee in Europe with no target in sight. Meanwhile, June Cobb orchestrated a delivery to Orta in the midst of the most legendary and controversial assassination attempt in CIA history.

So we can either believe that William Harvey was running two simultaneous assassination recruitments—one through June Cobb targeting Castro, and the other in Europe with QJWIN targeting no one—or we can surmise that Harvey crafted one assassination attempt with an ingenious diversion.

William Harvey was focused on Castro, Miami, and a coup in the Caribbean in a plot that was also enlisting mobsters. That’s where June Cobb was. And so was Jerrie Cobb.

7.6 BLIMPS AND BARRACUDAS: JERRIE COBB IN MIAMI, FEBRUARY–MARCH 1961

Miami was always central to the plot. In the Office of Security’s mob delivery saga, the gangsters were usually met by their CIA handlers in Miami. Johnny Roselli stayed in Miami while he was acting as the conduit between the agency and other gangsters. Sam Giancana came in from Chicago to receive the poison pills. Miami was the springboard for the operation against Castro, and the penultimate meeting on March 12, 1961, where the plot was finalized, took place at Miami’s Fontainebleau hotel.

Neither June Cobb nor QJWIN was supposed to be in Miami. It was Jerrie Cobb who was in Miami at the time when Giancana was teed up for the operation, and it was Jerrie who was in Miami when the mobsters were recruited into the plot.

Jerrie was in Miami preparing for an astronautics conference on March 1, 1960, the day June met with “Sam” to give him the letters of introduction to reach Orta. She flew the Goodyear blimp over Miami skies forty-eight hours before June reported she was in communication with “Sam” about his imminent departure for Cuba. Jerrie also arrived in Miami on February 7, the day before the Luxembourg chief said QJWIN had met a criminal in “Milan” for use in the assassination program. If Jerrie Cobb was QJWIN, then “Milan” was this team’s open code for Miami.

By March 12, 1961, the day O’Connell, Maheu, and the gangsters met at the Fontainebleau with the pills, Jerrie had already left Florida. “Sam” was all set with June’s recruitment letter for Orta by March 8. The Office of Security personnel probably did travel to Miami with poison tablets for the gangsters since the delivery of sensitive materials was within their purview. But once June forged her path to Orta, there was no need to involve mobsters in this plot. The use of criminals followed QJWIN’s modus operandi to a tee: casting hoodlums in a supporting role, to frame them, giving the United States a measure of distance from the deed.

FIGURE 7B. Jerrie Cobb flew the Goodyear blimp over Miami on March 7, 1961.

When QJWIN’s assignment in “Europe” was completed, the Luxembourg chief sent headquarters a long dispatch detailing the results. After dispatches like this were drafted, they were couriered in diplomatic pouches that took days or weeks to arrive, so Luxembourg also cabled headquarters telling it to look for the dispatch.

That cable was intercepted by a CIA officer who was concerned about the security of those materials. “Jerri,” now spelled with two Rs, made it her business to intercept that cable and jot down where she thought QJWIN’s materials should go.

Here is Jerri’s signature from the cable, compared to the signature of Jerrie Cobb:

FIGURE 7C. The CIA agent named “Jerri” has now handled QJWIN’s materials twice, spanning two of QJWIN’s assassination-related assignments in two different geographic zones.

INTERLUDE 7

Cuba and Fidel

We always seemed to be dancing around Cuba. I tended to bring it up, and Jerrie planned cruises where we could see the island from our cabin’s balcony. It was amazing how a conversation with Jerrie could dry up when you hit a topic she was intent on avoiding. She always won those contests.

Of course, that didn’t stop me from talking about Cuba. Every time it was on the horizon, I did my best. I brought up how I was dying to visit. Or how the softening of stances between our countries was making travel easier. Or I wondered aloud if the rumors of Castro’s declining health were true.

She never bit. When I suggested we plan a trip to Cuba together, she said she wouldn’t go until Americans could travel freely without restrictions, but I got the feeling Cuba would never be free enough for her liking.

So I decided to go. Jerrie was right, there were a few restrictions, but I managed to peel away from our group’s cultural programming to mosey past a few of June Cobb’s old haunts. I strolled by Trafficante’s Capri Hotel, where June’s apartment had been perched across the street. I photographed the taxi stand where her couriers had awaited their fares and other special deliveries from “Sam.” I even sat on the veranda and sipped a Cuban rum at the Hotel Nacional, where June had picked up cryptic telegrams containing signals from headquarters.

The purpose of my trip was twofold. As a visual person, I needed to walk the Malecón, the glorious Cuban esplanade and seawall, at dusk to behold a city I’d struggled to conjure from the dry government prose. But more important, I scheduled a stopover at Jerrie’s house on my way back. It’s hard to avoid talking about a place when you’re hosting a visitor who’s just been there. I also wanted my partner, Michele, to finally meet her because up to that point, visiting with Jerrie was something I’d always done alone.

After the short flight back from Havana, Michele and I pulled into the driveway of the yellow rancher and were warmly greeted by Jerrie and Ruth. We came bearing gifts—a bottle of 7 Años rum and a framed picture of the streets of Havana. In just a few short years, when Jerrie lay dying, she would angle the Old Havana streetscape so it was facing her bedside.

I was pleased to see that that evening Jerrie summoned her energy for Michele. I use the term evening lightly because here evening started at three, and bedtime might be seven. As the four of us feasted on white bread, ham and cheese, and Coke, Michele got to see Jerrie at her best. She could be downright charming, inclusive, and a good listener with the right motivation. For Jerrie, the sight of a newcomer seemed to provide a rare shot of adrenaline.

Jerrie listened intently to our sightseeing tales and was eager to see the pictures when I pulled out my phone. But as we moved to her living room to scroll through the photos, I suddenly saw our trip through new eyes—her eyes—and my iPhone became a booby-trapped implement of stress. The selfie I’d taken in front of an oil painting of Fidel, with my hair tucked under a Cuban revolutionary cap, felt completely different now, looking at it with Jerrie. There I was, smiling in front of Castro’s big face while proudly wearing his army gear. It had all seemed so far away and touristy when I posed for it. I could only hope she understood that time had passed and things were different now. But still, what had I been thinking?

I bravely continued swiping, knowing the next series could only get worse. Sure enough, it was La Cabaña prison, and unlike my cavalier selfie, I was fully aware of the sensitivities here. William Morgan, a close friend of June’s, was stood up and executed by firing squad against that wall of this prison, a death that served as a warning to her and to others. While I was there, I felt the spiritual reverberations of that place. I’d solemnly photographed the bullet holes pocking the weathered masonry as tourists peacefully walked by in the glorious Cuban sun. I showed Jerrie these pictures, and we were both silent.

Then one of my photos caught her eye and she made me go back to it. “What’s this?” she said, knowing full well what it was. She cornered me with her gaze and awaited an answer.

“It’s a wing from one of our American Air Force jets,” I said. “I guess when they shot us down, they saved a souvenir, and you can tell what kind of country they are when they put something like that on display.” I’d taken that picture outside La Cabaña prison, where the Cubans had set up a Cold War weapons display featuring Soviet rocket parts and gunnery rigs.

The plane wing had upset her, but I felt I acquitted myself well, and we were able to move on. She was happy I’d gone to Cuba but was tired now and suddenly headed to bed.

As she puttered into her bedroom, Michele and I stayed in their living room a few more minutes to decompress. We would be camping out on their screened-in porch in our sleeping bags, but the sun had barely dipped below the horizon on this balmy Florida night. Suddenly Jerrie reappeared in her nightshirt and stood in the doorway. She’d returned to deliver a message. This wasn’t a conversation but rather a one-way transmission of information.

 J: I knew Fidel, you know. Spoke with him many times. I knew his views, and he was not a communist. He would never have turned to communism if we’d supported him. He wasn’t against America. Not originally. When he got into power, he needed money to keep Cuba going, and he asked us for our help. He needed the money, but we wouldn’t help him. We turned him down. And so, he turned to Russia. But Fidel was not a communist. That changed only because Russia would help him, and we wouldn’t. That happened about three weeks after he took control of the country. That’s when we lost Cuba.

When Jerrie’s on a roll, it’s best not to interrupt with a question for fear of stopping the action, but she was finished.

M: When did you know Fidel? Before or after he got into office?

 J: Before. When he was in the mountains and coming across the country. I was there when Errol Flynn was there, the actor.

I flashed on another time Jerrie had told me about Flynn. We had been cruising by the Cuban landmass when she suddenly started talking about knowing Errol Flynn. Now I understood that she was connecting Flynn to Cuba and leaving clues as we were floating past the island. She’d spent time at Flynn’s Jamaican homestead and knew him rather well. The movie star was one of the few Americans received by Castro in the Sierra Maestra, the region where he’d launched his revolution. Flynn had then marched across the island with Castro’s army. Was flying in with Flynn Jerrie’s entrée to Fidel?

Once these portals into Jerrie’s secrets yawned open, they were bound to close quickly. I rushed in with a few questions before the inevitable silence resumed.

M: What about Che Guevara? He was a hardcore communist, right? Didn’t he influence Fidel?

 J: He was nothing. A mere revolutionary. He died, you know.

She snarled out the sentence about Guevara and was obviously happy he was dead. But Fidel was different. For him, I sensed respect. I asked for her measure of Castro as a man.

 J: I liked him. Fidel was intelligent. We supported him and helped him take the island. He wouldn’t have gone communist if we’d given him the financial support he’d asked for. That much I know for sure.

She felt the United States had bungled its response to Castro and made catastrophic diplomatic mistakes in the first few weeks of his government. She seemed to tell me this so I would understand that she knew the exact moment when Castro turned to Russia, and that she could calculate it to the hour. And with that, this conversation ended as abruptly as it began, and Jerrie went to bed.

Michele and I looked at each other in silence. Jerrie Cobb knew Fidel Castro.

ACT THREE

UNSPOOLING THE CRIME

EIGHT

The Election

8.1 KENNEDY

I cannot explain why Cold War U.S. intelligence felt emboldened to swivel its focus from enemies abroad to perceived enemies within, but declassified government documents have proved that it did so. When Martin Luther King, Jr., was seen as a threat, he was bugged by the FBI, monitored by the NSA, surveilled by the CIA, and harassed until his untimely killing. Former intelligence lackeys were central to the Watergate crime, plying their skills in service of political power. And Malcolm X’s assassination was fueled by a covert FBI operation to inflame the rifts between African American leaders. The Cold War apparatus that was scanning for revolutionary uprisings had no off button when it came to our shores.

And that brings us to John F. Kennedy. In the run-up to the 1960 election, the success or failure of the Bay of Pigs and Orta operations hinged on both candidates supporting the plan. Vice President Richard Nixon had championed the authorization of the CIA’s covert program to train the exiles to overthrow Castro, but Kennedy’s position was still a question mark. CIA director Allen Dulles personally briefed Kennedy on the pending invasion, but informing the senator and knowing where he stood were two different things.

So in the lead-in to the presidential election, June Cobb turned her attention to Kennedy—specifically, to determining his level of commitment, or lack thereof, to overthrowing Castro. The setting was New York City in the final four weeks of the 1960 presidential campaign. That’s when the covert operation I discovered in the June Cobb file began, where she (1) attempted to discern Kennedy’s position on the invasion, (2) tried to influence him to support it, and then (3) met with an adviser who was helping Nixon after Kennedy failed to support the invasion.

Throughout this book, we’ve developed a tool kit for understanding the Cobb file. In prior operations, we’ve seen how June used open code to report to her case officer on sensitive matters. Her use of open code will continue. We’ve also seen that the events Cobb reported to her case officer, in chatty, offhand language, were espionage operations, and not idle gossip. That too will continue. Finally, we’ve seen that when Cobb submitted documents to her case officer that were works in progress, she and her case officer were refining them together.

That’s why it’s absolutely explosive that in October 1960, June Cobb wrote a speech to be delivered by John F. Kennedy in the final days of his campaign, and a draft of that speech resides in her CIA file. Cobb’s speech, written in Kennedy’s voice in a way that could be delivered only by him, announces his full-throated support for the Cuban exiles in their effort to regain their freedom from Castro. It was the position that many in the CIA’s leadership, who were then hip-deep in Bay of Pigs planning, wanted Kennedy to take, and she penned this speech just ten days before Americans would go to the polls.

John F. Kennedy never delivered June’s speech, but it wasn’t for lack of her trying. She was in direct contact with his presidential campaign, and she sent the speech to Kennedy’s foreign policy speechwriter. Cobb’s fifteen-page speech, which survives in her file, is the key to unspooling this dark operation.

8.2 THE SPEECH

As the leaves began turning in early October 1960, Jean Pierson booked a Manhattan hotel suite for Cobb to move into and then reserved the adjoining room for an audio team. Four CIA specialists bugged her room before she arrived and then parked themselves next door with a reel-to-reel system. This extraordinary twenty-four-hour surveillance ran from October 12 through November 9, 1960, and coincided with the final four weeks of Kennedy’s presidential campaign. During this same time frame, QJWIN was preparing for the Africa mission, but let’s remember that QJWIN’s departure for that mission hit repeated delays.

Over the course of the month, the agents next door filled seventy-five reels of tape, but only a 194-page summary log remains in Cobb’s file. It describes some of Cobb’s conversations and visitors in detail while giving short shrift to others. She was aware she was bugged because she turned up music to speak privately with some visitors, and she explained to one caller that she couldn’t read aloud into the phone. Her activities outside the room were never monitored, meaning that it was conversations in her suite that were of primary interest. Cobb’s hotel, the Park Chambers, was a twelve-block walk from Kennedy’s campaign headquarters in Manhattan.

The summary log exposes Cobb’s intense focus on the presidential election. Minute-by-minute entries document her voracious consumption of political television programming, no small feat prior to the invention of around-the-clock cable. If she wasn’t watching a presidential debate, she was tuned in to a roundtable discussion of the candidate’s views on Latin America. But it was on October 29, 1960, that the agents next door seemed confused by something she read.

Subject [Cobb] reads aloud remarks of John F. Kennedy re: Latin America, dictatorships and communism. (or else it is something she has written herself.) Visitor comments that Subject writes very well.

What the agents had heard was June reading aloud the fifteen-page speech she’d just written, which could be delivered by only one person—the Democratic candidate for president, Senator Kennedy. In the speech, she laid out a scathing assessment of America’s failure to protect Latin America from the communist scourge. Here is an excerpt from the speech draft I found in Cobb’s CIA file:

Four weeks ago, when Fidel Castro left New York in the plane his Russian friends provided for him, one of his parting remarks was to the effect that we Americans talk and talk about communism but that we have no idea what communism is.

If the American people elect Democratic leadership for the next four years, we intend to make it very clear to the entire world that our people certainly do know what communism is. And we intend to explain to the rest of the nations of Latin America why communism is the deadly enemy of free men. We intend to carry on an information program that will [several words illegible] before it is too late. How communism can take over a country by using even a small minority of Communists, beginning inconspicuously. We intend to help the other people of Latin America learn from the experience of the Cuban people these past two years, during which a very small minority of Communists and Communist sympathizers maneuvered into power.

This brings us back to what we have said about supporting the fight of the Cuban people to regain the freedom they have been losing more and more every day during Castro’s regime. When we refer to helping the people of Cuba we made very clear we meant those who oppose the totalitarian Castro regime and who are at the same time without the guilt of collaboration or association with the Batista dictatorship that the people of Cuba despised.

Before we delve into the details of this speech, let’s consider the most troubling aspect: that June Cobb submitted it to her case officer, who accepted it and archived it into her CIA file. If this speech was unrelated to Cobb’s spying, shouldn’t Pierson have rejected it and explained that the agency couldn’t receive or monitor materials that were being submitted to a presidential campaign? But not only did Pierson accept the speech, she went into Cobb’s suite to secure her typewriter carbons after she wrote it. The case officer was well aware of Cobb’s political intrigues because Cobb kept her informed through cryptic memos that Pierson also accepted. It’s hard to see much daylight between the way Pierson handled Cobb’s election meddling and the way she was handling her covert action against Castro.

Sections of this speech are incredibly revealing about June Cobb herself. Notice that she was asserting a stridently hawkish position for Kennedy, going so far as to call communism “the deadly enemy of free men.” But wait—wasn’t June Cobb supposed to be sympathetic to communist leaders and a starry-eyed supporter of Latin American revolutions? This speech, combined with Pierson’s memo pondering what opinions Cobb could pretend to have about Castro, demonstrates that the CIA agent using the name June Cobb took political stances that were nothing more than deceptive lures crafted to gain access to leaders for espionage purposes.

This next passage is particularly duplicitous.

Most of the once independent presses in Cuba are working around the clock to produce anti-American propaganda to spread all over Latin America. A good example is one book in which the title refers to our country as The Shark and to the countries of Latin America as the little sardines. All this did not have to happen.

The Shark and the Sardines, by Guatemalan ex-president Juan José Arévalo, was a fable meant to show how the menacing shark named America was gobbling up the little countries of Latin America, the sardines—an idea that would have been anathema to June Cobb in 1960 as she was plotting against Castro. And yet even as she was typing that passage, Cobb had maneuvered herself into a job translating Arévalo’s book, pretending she believed in it so very much! She used a similar tactic to penetrate Castro’s government in 1960, translating documents for him while enlisting Orta to betray the Cuban revolution.

June Cobb’s true beliefs are defined not by her words but by her actions. She was a fearsome cold warrior who was capable of suckering dictators into accepting her into their circle so she could bring harm to their revolutions, or worse. She could translate articles for Castro one day and write speeches for Kennedy the next—but her angle was always the same. Her true purpose was the elimination of communism from the face of the earth, and anyone who got in the way of that goal quickly became her collateral damage.

Understanding who she actually was and what she actually did raises a concerning specter here. Once again June was sending her handiwork to a charismatic leader or his team, trying to shape and influence his views. Kennedy was a champion of the mainstream left, not the right. The left was always her target. Can we really exclude the possibility that she was doing so, yet again, as another espionage operation, intended to infiltrate the circle and nudge the views in a certain direction? And if the leader didn’t cooperate, as we’ve seen throughout this book, inflict a consequence?

The most salient portion of this speech, and the one that is so provocative, is the paragraph where Cobb has Kennedy say he was “supporting the fight of the Cuban people to regain the freedom they’ve been losing more and more every day during Castro’s regime.” That language would put Kennedy dangerously close to supporting the overthrow, but that was not his position. Kennedy was always careful to avoid overthrow language or anything close to it. So why was Cobb mouthing that position for him just weeks before the election?

Incredibly, June wasn’t the only one typing up overthrow language for Kennedy—so was the candidate’s own speechwriter. What’s more, that speechwriter was in direct contact with June Cobb, and he was receiving her materials on behalf of the Kennedy presidential campaign.

8.3 BOY WONDER

Richard Goodwin, dubbed the “boy wonder” by the Washington press, was plucked from obscurity and placed in the role of writing Kennedy’s speeches throughout the 1960 campaign. Goodwin quickly vaulted from fledgling speechwriter to the architect of Kennedy’s policy on Latin America, even though he had never set foot in Latin America, spoke no Spanish, and was fresh out of law school.

Goodwin’s speedy ascent was attributed to his academic brilliance, but not even Harvard Law prepares its graduates to tackle the elimination of communism from the western hemisphere. His startlingly broad responsibilities, once Kennedy took office, didn’t go unnoticed. One of Kennedy’s detractors in Congress described Goodwin as a “kid playing with fire” who was running a “one-man state department on Latin America.”

But more perplexing than Goodwin’s leapfrog over experienced foreign policy experts was his willingness to accept a Cuban policy speech from Fidel Castro’s secretary. In her congressional testimony in 1962, Cobb named Goodwin as her conduit to the Kennedy campaign while also downplaying her contacts with him. In that testimony, she claimed she sent him her materials on Cuba and that months later they spoke on the phone but never met. But in her private reports to her case officer, she struck a very different tone, barely containing her glee at how influential her submission through Goodwin had been on Kennedy policy. She wrote to Pierson on April 14, 1961:

By the way, do you remember the memorandum I prepared for someone in the Kennedy campaign team,—the several pages of what Kennedy should say about Cuba. I didn’t save a copy, but when I read the Kennedy White Paper, I was delighted to see that what I had been sure would get a good reaction in South America during campaign time was almost exactly what the White Paper finally got on the record now.

Cobb was correct that the Kennedy White Paper, a document released by the State Department in April 1961 titled CUBA, tracked nicely with the views in the speech she had submitted to Goodwin. Both documents emphasized the brutality of the former Batista dictatorship and the initial optimism surrounding Castro’s rise, then highlighted Fidel’s communist turn. Starkly criticizing Batista was a stance Cobb felt was vital, to create distance from America’s prior support of his regime. How much influence her submission wielded is hard to say, but clearly she was pleased with the result.

Could Cobb have been overblowing her influence with Goodwin in her reports? That’s possible but unlikely, and would fly in the face of everything we know about Cobb. June was valuable to the agency because of her talent gaining access to leaders, or to their teams. Cobb expressed to Jean Pierson that she felt her submissions through Goodwin had influence, to the point of being “almost exactly what the White Paper got on the record now.”

It would have been hard for Goodwin to claim that he was ignorant of Cobb’s status with Castro. In mid-September 1960, five weeks before her speech submission to him, a national wire story announced Cobb’s arrival from Cuba, identifying her as Castro’s translator and on the Cuban government payroll.

But even if Goodwin hadn’t seen the article, June’s only known foreign policy credential was working for Castro. Since a presidential campaign accepting a Cuban policy speech from Fidel Castro’s secretary would be akin to receiving a truckload of radioactive waste, the question must be asked, why did Cobb believe her sway over Goodwin was so strong?

FIGURE 8A. June Cobb’s arrival from Cuba, as reported in the New York Daily News on September 18, 1960.

Click here to view as text.

Goodwin’s receptivity to hearing from Fidel Castro’s secretary, and Cobb’s confidence that he had absorbed her views into Kennedy’s policy, were the reasons I began to wonder if Goodwin had entered the campaign with an intelligence background. After all, by reading her speech, he was in on her secret—that Fidel Castro’s secretary was promoting his overthrow! That knowledge alone put him in possession of highly classified information.

While it’s always difficult to discern whether a person has intelligence experience, Goodwin’s own assessment of his abilities shed considerable light. In his personal papers at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, I found a memo he wrote to President Kennedy on November 1, 1961. In it, Goodwin advanced the idea that the Kennedy administration could set up its own “command operation” with the goal of unseating Castro.

Goodwin didn’t think this type of covert activity should be housed in the State Department, and he didn’t think the CIA could handle it either. He believed that “even if the CIA can find someone with sufficient force and stature to command it,” the agency would need to completely “revamp CIA operations and thinking.” Goodwin’s vision was that this shadow intelligence program would be commanded by Robert Kennedy and would conduct propaganda and covert action against Cuba with the goal of an overthrow. Goodwin then lobbied for the operation to be run on a day-to-day basis by none other than himself.

The tone of his memo held the expectation that Kennedy might give him this job, and I had trouble imagining any commander in chief would consider anyone for this position who didn’t have prior experience overthrowing a country. This reinforces the idea that Goodwin knew exactly who he was receiving materials from when he was in contact with June Cobb. Goodwin and Kennedy might not have wanted advice from Fidel Castro’s secretary, but they might have been fascinated to hear from America’s most deeply placed spy who had a ringside seat to Castro’s regime.

Did either Kennedy or Goodwin know who June Cobb really was? Possibly. But Goodwin, if he was influenced by her Cuban policy submission, surely must have. Accepting a Cuban policy speech from a Castro employee would have been negligent to the point of sabotage. If the press got wind of that tidbit, Kennedy’s hopes for the presidency would have been doomed. That bombshell never did detonate. It was the mistake Goodwin made at the eleventh hour that nearly swung the election to Nixon.

8.4 OCTOBER SURPRISE

Every time Kennedy attacked the Eisenhower administration for allowing communism to take root near American shores, his poll numbers rose. In a widely covered speech in early October 1960, Kennedy goaded Nixon for abandoning the Cubans who were on the side of democracy. It was an impossible charge for the vice president to answer since both candidates knew the invasion was pending, yet both were told to keep that information under wraps for strategic purposes.

In his memoir, Remembering America, Goodwin wrote, “In late October, en route to New York, Kennedy told me to ‘get ready a real blast for Nixon.’ ” From campaign headquarters in Manhattan, Goodwin then drafted a statement debuting a new position for his candidate, spelling out Kennedy’s belief that the United States should assist the Cuban rebels “who offer eventual hope of overthrowing Castro.” That statement would have greatly pleased June Cobb, who was simultaneously typing up that same position and sending it to Goodwin. The problem was, Kennedy didn’t hold that position. While he’d spoken with enthusiasm about supporting the Cuban exiles, he’d always been careful to avoid mentioning a coup.

Goodwin admitted that, late on the night of October 20, 1960, he rushed out the statement without Kennedy’s approval, explaining that the senator was sleeping and “none of us had the heart to wake the weary candidate for this trivial restatement of his position.” Goodwin claimed he felt pressure to meet the “morning paper deadline” while also confessing that Kennedy was always careful to “strike from my drafts any implication that we would act forcibly to overthrow Castro.” According to Goodwin, it was the “only public statement by the candidate in the entire campaign that he had not personally reviewed.”

The bombshell detonated on the front page of The New York Times on Friday, October 21, the morning of the Kennedy-Nixon debate featuring Cuba. That night Nixon capitalized on it, calling Kennedy’s overthrow position dangerous and explaining that it violated international law, citing the exact legal provision. Kennedy didn’t even defend the error. “Nixon Says Kennedy Plan Risks World War” wasn’t the headline Democrats were hoping for with the election just two weeks away. JFK told Goodwin and his boss, Ted Sorenson, “If I win this thing, I won it; but if I lose it, you guys lost it.” It was Kennedy’s worst campaign blunder, and Goodwin admitted the error was all his.

The dustup was still making news on October 29, when June Cobb was surveilled reading her speech aloud for her visitor. When you consider the timing, it certainly looks like Cobb was hoping her speech would steer Kennedy into a full-throated defense of Goodwin’s misstated position. She even referred to Goodwin’s overthrow language in her speech with the line, “This brings us back to what we have said about supporting the fight of the Cuban people to regain the freedom they have been losing more and more every day during Castro’s regime.”

Kennedy never delivered Cobb’s speech. The day after her private read-through, June was glued to her TV watching political programming when she saw an interview with Senator Jacob Javits of New York, in which he said that Kennedy had retracted the position on the overthrow from his previous public statement. This sent Cobb into a frenzied series of calls to ascertain whether this was true. From the surveillance log:

1:07 p.m. SUBJECT [Cobb] puts on TV program…. This was a special NBC political program entitled “Minority Viewpoint.”

1:45 p.m. SUBJECT’s [Cobb’s] TV continues. Program on is show with Senator JAVITS being questioned by young citizens—Channel 7.

1:53 p.m. Outgoing call to a Lehigh 5-05? exchange by SUBJECT. Asks for a Mr. FARBER (phonetic). SUBJECT wants a copy of Senator KENNEDY’s retraction on Cuba.

1:54 p.m. Outgoing call to Plaza 2-3100. SUBJECT said she was listening to Senator JAVITS on TV who said Senator KENNEDY had retracted his statement on assisting counter revolutionaries in Cuba. SUBJECT wanted to know if she could have a copy of this statement. SUBJECT had turned down Public News Conference program on TV. SUBJECT appeared to be so concerned about Senator JAVITS’s statement that KENNEDY had retracted his statement re aid to Cuban Revolutionaries, that she made two telephone calls to verify this retraction prior to the end of the JAVITS interview.

June Cobb had two phone numbers committed to memory where she could order a transcript of Kennedy’s statement, and the second number she dialed was Kennedy’s campaign headquarters in Manhattan. She wanted proof of the bad news, and she wanted it now. JFK had backed away from supporting the exiles, and if he won the election, the Bay of Pigs and her Orta mission would be lost.

But all along, June had been hedging her bets. While she was submitting a speech hoping to move Kennedy’s position, she was simultaneously meeting with another political strategist. His goal wasn’t to influence Kennedy. His goal was to get Nixon elected.

8.5 GETTING NIXON ELECTED

In the final weeks of a presidential campaign, political actors normally jockey to affect the outcome of the election. But CIA agents who specialize in government overthrows aren’t supposed to ply their skills in presidential elections. That’s why Cobb’s submissions to Goodwin, combined with her business with William S. Barnes, a policy adviser who was working to get Nixon elected, are so problematic. And just as with her Kennedy speech, Cobb reported on her dealings with Barnes to her CIA case officer.

October 13, 1960, Cobb’s notes to Pierson

William S. [Barnes] had apparently spent the day down in your hometown [Washington, D.C.] precisely discussing our troublesome friends.

He is about ready to come to the conclusion that it is too late to carry out the kind of attempt we discussed last summer. He discussed with me the advantages of making one last effort and then finding some new tenants for the house. He is interested in what can be done to improve the whole neighborhood.

Notice that Cobb was, once again, using vague language, as if she were reporting to her case officer something that she’d really rather not put down on paper. Obviously, Cobb and Pierson had discussed Barnes before, and Pierson knew who the “troublesome friends” were. Over the summer, Cobb and Barnes had been discussing some kind of attempt that Pierson was aware of, and they now would be making “one last effort” at whatever that was.

The meaning of the open code becomes clearer in Cobb’s next report. Goodwin’s misstatement had just hit the news when Cobb and Barnes reconvened, and the topic between them was how Barnes would help Nixon capitalize.

October 21, 1960, Cobb’s notes to Pierson

Barnes seems to want to get Nixon elected. He told me the purpose of his trip Friday [that same day] was to try to reach Nixon with a message about how he [Nixon] should react to the Kennedy statement on Cuba.

This would be a good time to ask why, early on the morning of the presidential debate, Barnes would have stopped by Cobb’s apartment to share his plan to approach Nixon. Cobb was meeting simultaneously with an adviser who was helping to shape Nixon’s response to Kennedy, while also writing a speech to bolster Kennedy’s position on Cuba. Why was Cobb in the middle of this incident to this extent?

Could Cobb and Barnes have known each other previously in some aboveboard capacity, perhaps working together on legitimate projects? Cobb’s cryptic reports to her case officer about Barnes suggest otherwise. Barnes even probed Cobb during one of their meetings, telling her he’d been asking about her in D.C., but her name “rang no bells” there. That made Barnes uncomfortable. “Well, it’s very difficult to communicate when one doesn’t know with whom one is communicating,” he told Cobb.

That evening, after the meeting between Barnes and Cobb, Nixon drew blood in the debate, citing that Kennedy’s position violated international law. Had Barnes helped Nixon script his winning response? According to Cobb’s CIA file, Barnes was a dean at Harvard Law School, and as such, he should have known Goodwin, who was president of the Harvard Law Review in 1958. Both men hailed from Boston, both were alums of Harvard Law, both were advising candidates on Latin America, both were invested in the election, both were involved in this incident, and both knew June Cobb. After Kennedy won the election, William Barnes even joined Goodwin’s Latin American think tank for the transition team.

“William Barnes” might have been who the Cobb file says he was, or as I suspect about “Sam Freedman,” he could have been an open-coded placeholder for someone else. Either way, whoever Barnes was, he was working against Kennedy while meeting regularly with Cobb—meetings she reported about to her case officer quite cryptically, as she’d done for her covert operations on Cuba.

If Cobb was up to her old tricks, there were a lot of moving parts, so let’s lay out a simplified timeline.

October 12 The CIA installs Cobb in a bugged hotel suite in Manhattan.

October 13 Barnes and Cobb meet to discuss one last attempt and new tenants for the house.

October 20, p.m. Goodwin misstates Kennedy’s position without waking the candidate.

October 21, a.m. Barnes and Cobb meet to discuss Kennedy’s error, Barnes rushes to help Nixon.

October 21, p.m. Nixon draws blood in the debate, based on Goodwin’s mistake.

October 23 “Kennedy Plan Risks World War” is the New York Times headline.

October 29 June reads aloud her speech affirming JFK’s support for the exiles.

October 30 When JFK retracts exile support, Cobb is furious and calls Kennedy headquarters.

The timeline is provocative, but it still isn’t clear what June’s role was or why she was reporting all this to her case officer. If there was an operation to pressure-test Kennedy’s position on Cuba, why was June Cobb involved, and what was her role?

Maybe it had something to do with the party she threw in her suite the night Goodwin failed to wake Kennedy. She threw quite a bash. It lasted all night, the same night Cobb socialized with her new friends, “Johnny” and “Bobby.”

8.6 “JOHNNY” AND “BOBBY”

Echoing Cobb’s fleeting friendships with “Rose” and “Sam,” “Johnny” and “Bobby” appeared in Cobb’s circle and engaged with her during the last few weeks of the presidential campaign. Suspecting that open code was being used in Cobb’s file, I became interested in finding out exactly when Robert Kennedy and John F. Kennedy stayed in Manhattan, and whether that fit with the appearances of “Johnny” and “Bobby” in Cobb’s hotel suite.

As it turns out, not only do Cobb’s visits with “Johnny” and “Bobby” line up perfectly with the Kennedys’ stopovers in New York City, but Cobb’s contacts with “Barnes” line up with the Kennedy campaign’s presence in Manhattan, too.

From October 11 to 13, the campaign settled into New York City to prepare Kennedy for the third presidential debate, which would film Kennedy in a Manhattan studio with Nixon in L.A. Around-the-clock coverage at Cobb’s hotel began on the thirteenth, the same day Cobb met with “Barnes” to discuss their “troublesome friends,” in a conversation Cobb then reported to her case officer. That night Kennedy broadcast his portion of the debate from a Manhattan studio nearby.

According to the surveillance log, Cobb watched that debate from her suite, after which she received a late-night call and invited the caller to visit her room. The unnamed visitor arrived at about one a.m. and stayed until four. An entire reel of audio was consumed recording whoever this was. The next day the campaign left Manhattan to barnstorm other regions.

Kennedy and his team returned to Manhattan on October 19 for three more days of prep for the next debate. That night Kennedy attended the Al Smith Dinner in Manhattan, while Cobb, once again, was monitored in her room. She was away from her hotel room from about three p.m. until six p.m., then hosted a male visitor for a late dinner, a companion who spoke Spanish, which John F. Kennedy did not. The next day Cobb reported to her case officer that she had “seen Johnny last night.” “Johnny” may have been her dinner companion or someone she saw between three and six while not in her room.

The pivotal night in this sequence is October 20, when Goodwin penned the unapproved statement without waking Kennedy. That evening Cobb threw a bash in her suite, a party the CIA paid for and told her to host. The socializing began around dinnertime, when Cobb and her case officer, Pierson, who was undercover using her alias “Joan Price” according to the surveillance log, left the hotel to go to see “Johnny.” Cobb returned with numerous friends, and the party took off at about eleven p.m. People kept arriving, drinking, and dancing into the wee hours, crescendoing at about one a.m., when the eavesdropping agents likened Cobb’s party to a “tobacco auction” in their log.

Some guests spoke Spanish, while others spoke English, and while the agents recorded only a few of the guests’ names, one of the most active talkers was someone named “Bobby.” When the party finally wound down, Cobb bade farewell to everyone except a man the agents referred to as her “boyfriend.” Once alone, the couple gossiped about the party and how the “boyfriend” had lost his watch, joking that Castro’s intelligence agents must have stolen it. Cobb’s “boyfriend” was an English speaker, and he was still in her room at 4:40 a.m. His departure was never recorded because the summary log halted abruptly.

The morning after the bash, Cobb received several visitors. The first to arrive was a male, and June carefully conducted their conversation away from the microphones. According to her report to her case officer, this visitor was “Barnes,” and he discussed his plan to help Nixon capitalize on Goodwin’s misstated position, which had just hit the news.

Cobb’s next visitor was “Bobby,” who’d come by to check on the boyfriend’s missing watch. “Bobby” visited Cobb again later that day to discuss narcotics trafficking in South America and the FBI. “Bobby” left Cobb’s suite at about six p.m., after which she settled in to watch the Kennedy-Nixon debate, broadcasting a few blocks away. “Johnny” was never further described, but “Bobby” is explained in Pierson’s notes as being “Bobby Salas,” a Cuban photographer.

Cobb testified to Congress that she submitted her document on Cuba to Goodwin during the campaign and later was delighted that Goodwin, whom she’d also spoken with by phone, had assimilated her views into Kennedy’s White Paper. But none of that proves she was partnered on a covert operation with Goodwin. So is there any other evidence of Goodwin’s participation?

Cobb Submits Her Speech to a “Dr. Goodwin,” Who Is in Touch with Cobb’s Handlers

A week after Kennedy’s team skillfully walked back Goodwin’s overthrow language, a man and woman visited Cobb’s room while she was being surveilled in her suite. These visitors could have been Cobb’s case officers, with whom she was in frequent contact during this period. One topic between them, according to the summary log, was a twelve-page article that she recently typed up for a “Dr. Goodwin” on the topic of Latin America that he had added to his book. Cobb explained to the visitors that after she gave “Dr. Goodwin” her “wonderful article on Latin America,” he “made a speech about it” and then printed up copies for broad distribution. But Cobb said, in the end, that she believed the speech had “been suppressed.” She told the visitors that they needed to go see Goodwin directly now about the book. “He’s nervous about it.”

Goodwin’s mistaken position didn’t end Kennedy’s candidacy. Americans went to the polls on November 8, 1960, and voted for John F. Kennedy as the thirty-fifth president of the United States. The tally was so close that Nixon didn’t concede until the next day. He wired his congratulations to Kennedy while the CIA was rolling up the surveillance net on June Cobb’s hotel.

INTERLUDE 8

Back to Redbird

Four long years had passed while I waited for my moment to circle back to the topic of Redbird. I knew Jerrie Cobb better now in so many ways. We’d traveled the world in a series of strained and strange trips that had been stressful for us both. She’d given me glimpses into her true self while making it clear that large swaths of her life pertaining to her “work” had to remain private. This work clearly no longer meant her piloting or her Amazon charity, since all that was public knowledge. While she never articulated exactly what that “work” was, she gave me windows into it—windows that she opened and closed at her whims and seldom at my choosing.

I knew when I brought up the Kennedy assassination again, I would be treading on protected ground, and I doubted it would be fruitful. But every time I saw her, she was weaker, and every trip we took could be our last. I promised myself I would return to Redbird on our next excursion, no matter how many sentries she posted on that wall. The time had come for me to take that risk again.

For every trip, Jerrie always manufactured a pretext, and this time she said she wanted to drive across the Yucatán to spot flamingos in the wild. Motoring across the peninsula would also immerse me in Mexican culture, something she was keen to share because she said she’d lived in Mexico for a time. That didn’t match Jerrie’s stated biography, but it perfectly matched June’s.

As always, Ruth traveled with us, and incredibly, at age ninety, the stout and sturdy former army WAC would be our driver. Still, a more capable driver would have been hard to find. One day Ruth drove twelve hours on narrow roads where, if a wheel slipped off the berm, you’d tumble down a precipice from which you wouldn’t be discovered for a week.

When we finally spotted six flamingos on a waterway at three hundred yards, Jerrie didn’t even get out of the car to see them. Sightseeing was something I did alone. Our car time was the highlight, with Jerrie delivering travelogues on Mexican culture, always with a been-there-done-that quality, as if there were scarcely a corner of Mexico she hadn’t previously explored. She could be downright chatty in the absence of pointed questions.

Leaning forward from the back seat, her piercing blue eyes prowled the horizon for tiny puffs of smoke, signaling that a family was cooking, with meals for sale. These pit stops scared me, as I was in no mood to be sidelined by a foodborne illness. Nearing ninety, Jerrie had no such fear. She happily sampled from the locals—but only if the price was right. She insisted on driving a bargain, even from a poverty-stricken family with a single chicken on a roadside spit in the middle of nowhere. Many times she asked the price and then refused to pay it, speeding off and leaving the desperate seller and their chicken to await another car.

The first leg of our junket was from Cancún to Mérida, and upon our arrival at Mérida’s town square, she made a beeline for a park bench where she said she had often sat while working. From that bench, she pointed to several government buildings where she said she had also worked. As soon as she dropped that information, we left Mérida. It was as if this first leg had been designed to culminate on that park bench, yet I highly doubt she sold any Aero Commanders from the public seating in Mérida’s square.

While driving back, she told me she had considered retiring to Mexico but was worried about the drug trafficking. Dope smuggling was another topic in which she was both knowledgable and emotionally invested, with nuanced opinions about how the narcotics industry should be privatized. This illicit underworld was what kept us from visiting Mexico City. She badly wanted for me to see it, but we heeded the State Department’s warning that travel was unsafe for Americans at the time. The pretext for that trip would have been to see the monarch butterflies, but we never made it to see their amazing clusters in the trees.

As pleasant as it was to tour the Mexican countryside, my vow to return to Redbird was always on my mind. But with Jerrie, the conversational landscape was always riddled with spring-loaded eggshells. If I asked the wrong question or pressed too hard on a sensitive topic, she could shut down for the rest of the trip. Once, we spent five weeks sailing across the Atlantic and road-tripping across Spain, but Jerrie barely answered a single personal question. That’s because early on I’d asked her what celebrities she knew, and my punishment for being too inquisitive was to be frozen out for the remainder of the journey.

So bringing up Redbird on this trip would be no easy matter. Every evening as we ate burritos and sipped margaritas, I jockeyed for position, corralling the conversation this way and that, trying to work my way into an opening, but no opening appeared.

As we wandered back across the Yucatán, the clock was ticking down, and tension was building in us both. Jerrie claimed her anxiety revolved around the to-do list that awaited her upon return. She often complained about her need to keep working and said with the type of work she’d done in her life, she could never truly retire. When I pressed her about what this miserable to-do list involved, she said she was constantly deflecting inquiries for speaking engagements and interviews, requests that greatly upset her. I know she got a few inquiries but not enough to warrant the level of stress she was carrying. There was clearly more to it, tucked beyond her brick wall.

One evening as we sat on our beds near the peninsula’s midpoint, her frustration reached a boil. Out of the blue, she angrily snapped that she really hadn’t been “very important to history” and didn’t understand why the fuss about her space years was continuing. Somehow that burst of emotion afforded me an opening. So I leaned in, copied her targeted eye contact, and made it clear from my tone that I was lobbing her a double entendre.

M: Are you telling me you’ve never played a role in history in any way?

 J: Not really.

M: You mean that you never did anything whatsoever…to influence history? Nothing at all?

 J: No.

M: So you’re trying to tell me that nothing you did impacted the course of history in any way?

 J: No!

The air was thick with Jerrie’s unambiguous message to back off, and her piercing glare reinforced the warning. I held my ground as we sat silently in a Mexican standoff, until her own denial was like a radioactive isotope that could no longer stop itself from ejecting the electron. Suddenly she needed air and jolted out of her seat for a walk, which I made sure we took together. I wasn’t letting her off this hook.

As we strolled Valladolid’s square at dusk, her internal pressure rose with every step we took. That in and of itself was interesting since the question I’d posed had seemed benign, unless I’d sliced into a malignancy. I caught her wiping away tears as we ambled by the wrought iron benches that she was too restless to sit upon. Cracks in her armor were appearing.

Finally, she steered us to an open-air bistro for a cool drink and wanted to know more about my Cold War research. I’d recently announced on my website that I was studying women in the Cold War, and she knew she was the centerpiece of that work. Suddenly, both Jerrie and Ruth, who’d tagged along, declared in unison that women did absolutely nothing in the Cold War and never had any chance to participate at any level. Not only was Jerrie denying her own history, both overt and covert; she was denying the role of all women on the planet. What a bizarre position to take, considering her role with NASA and Ruth’s service as a WAC in the Korean War.

Since they’d hardened their field defenses, I navigated to what I thought would be neutral ground. The general origins of the Cold War seemed like a safe topic, so I countered that as the threat of communism emerged at the end of World War II, several well-documented women had placed their lives on the line for democracy. I told them I had an interest in how Americans had jostled with the Russians to acquire advanced Nazi technology and the personnel to achieve the scientific edge, and how the Cold War had been born in the process. This seemed a simple statement of historical fact, but for some reason, it took us off the rails.

Ruth, in particular, apparently took umbrage at my harsh assessment of Nazis in general. Jerrie countered that many ex-Nazis, like her friend Wernher von Braun, had disavowed their pasts and gone all in for America. She said she had had “many long talks” with von Braun and knew his views in detail. With no ammunition to counter a first-person conversation, I allowed that he may have evolved, but that hundreds of Jewish prisoners died in horrific conditions while building his rocketry for the Third Reich, and he couldn’t have been immune to those methods. That statement of fact infuriated them both and propelled us into an epic all-night fight, in which they accused me of having “made up my mind” in some way that greatly upset them. Even when I backed off, since I wasn’t even alive then, and asked for their views, they would no longer speak to me about it.

What had upset them, as near as I could tell, was any hint that the United States could have been morally compromised by working with Nazis as we assimilated them into our military-industrial complex. Of course, this recruitment of Nazi scientists, known as Operation Paperclip, is discussed on the CIA’s website, so it’s hardly controversial to acknowledge its existence. The moral concerns would seem equally clear.

But from Jerrie and Ruth’s perspective, narratives that posed a moral question about America’s choices were upsetting. Or perhaps the upset was that I was interested in exploring those gray areas. They seemed unable or unwilling to consider that there could be mixed moral and ethical choices in complex historical moments. They preferred crisp black-and-white. Ruth made the sweeping assessment that talking to me further about anything just “wasn’t worth it.” They were shutting down, and Ruth was now vigorously advocating that I be given no more information. All this because I suggested that working with Nazis was morally complicated.

In no mood to soften my views on Nazis, I stomped out of our hotel in the wee hours and walked over to the lonely square by myself. I considered leaving by bus the next morning and bailing on the mission entirely. If we couldn’t navigate World War II, how could I ever maneuver us back to Redbird and Dallas? When I finally got back to the hotel, they both were sitting up on the bed waiting for me. Jerrie forced Ruth to apologize, which, like a good soldier, she did.

Since the situation had finally cracked open, I insisted we get to the heart of the matter. I bluntly asked if they were worried that someday I would tell Jerrie’s story, not the space story but her “real story,” and about how I would do it. No, they were fine with that. Were they worried that I knew too much about Jerrie now? No. Were they worried about what I would do after Jerrie’s lifetime and what I might say? No. About how I might say it? No. But Ruth emphasized that she was unwilling to share anything further about her own wartime service. It was as if they were saying that they couldn’t tell me more, but also that neither of them wanted me to stop.

The next morning I had to decide whether to continue on this trip. Jerrie said our friendship would be over if I left, and she wanted me to stay. I told her my purpose now exceeded the bounds of our friendship, and that I was here for a higher purpose that pertained to my Cold War project and to her story in particular. She nodded, indicating she already knew that, and her smile telegraphed that she was pleased. I told her this was now bigger than the both of us and that contrary to her denials, my project “was important to history.” To that statement, she also heartily agreed. And with that acknowledgment, we piled back into the economy hatchback to continue our close-quarters cage match to the end.

For the last leg of the trip, Jerrie settled us into a small beachside hotel in Puerto Morelos that always had “her room” at the ready. I don’t think we even had to pay. We were down to our last few days, and after a calming rest at the beach, where we resumed a sense of normalcy, we both knew we needed to suit up for one final skirmish.

It was a clarifyingly sunny morning, when Jerrie asked Ruth to occupy herself elsewhere, while we went into town for a chat. I picked a sidewalk table at a hip café that was exactly the type of place where I would park myself to write a screenplay. There was no sign of the Drip-o-Matic coffee Jerrie prefers, so for once, I had a home-field advantage—and it was in this cozy setting that I initiated my landing sequence for Redbird.

I started out very directly, saying I wanted to go back to a conversation we’d had that “was important to history” and to revisit her story about being in Dallas—

She cut me off.

 J: Well, I’ve flown to Dallas many times, but I guess you want to talk about the day Kennedy died.

Surely, judging from her tone, an outside observer would have thought this was the hundredth time I’d brought it up and not the second time in four years. I ignored her annoyance laced with boredom and soldiered on, saying it had been a pivotal day in history, and I needed to know more about what happened.

I decided to preemptively restate everything she’d told me before: how she’d flown into Redbird on the morning of Kennedy’s death with Life magazine reporters; how they hadn’t gotten off the plane to cover the events; how they’d waited on the runway out of concern that the airspace would shut down; and how they had received two sets of news before exiting. I restated everything to get it on the record again, to see if she was going to deny any of it.

She didn’t. One hurdle down.

Then I started in on the problems with the story.

M: So why didn’t the Life reporters go in to cover the story?

 J: Well, it was canceled.

I wasn’t sure if she was changing her story to say the entire flight had been canceled, so I restated more of her prior story.

M: So you get there with the Life reporters, and all those cameras, and you hear the president is shot, and then get word that he’s dead, and you’re out there on the tarmac, but you don’t go in because you hear you’re canceled? How can reporters be canceled at an event that turns into the biggest news story of the century?

She explained that Life realized they’d sent in two crews, one from New York and hers from “the Miami Bureau,” so Life canceled her crew upon arrival because they didn’t need two crews.

In the era before cellphones, this sudden cancellation at the airport would have been hard to accomplish, but I already knew Life didn’t have any crews covering the motorcade that day. Life’s assassination special edition featured photos of Dealey Plaza taken by amateurs and by other outlets for that very reason. But more importantly, Jerrie’s explanation didn’t address the obvious problem that any crew of reporters in Dallas that day would have run to cover the biggest story of the century, not sit waiting to exit an airport.

I challenged her very directly and said her story was hard to believe. I reminded her that I’d been in media all my life, and it was inconceivable that a Life crew would sit out on a runway and not run to Dealey Plaza or Parkland Hospital to cover the biggest scoop of their careers.

M: So you didn’t go do that? None of them did?

 J: No.

M: Okay, so who was there besides you and Jane Rieker?

 J: Jane Rieker wasn’t there.

M: You said she was before.

 J: No, she wasn’t there.

M: Okay, who was there?

 J: Oh, not many.

M: Exactly how many?

 J: Two or three of us.

M: Two or three. Okay. Name them.

At this point, she tossed out a name, doubtless to end this line of questioning, someone who I’d already confirmed had been elsewhere. I was backing her into a corner and forcing her to lie, something I sensed she didn’t want to do. Our first Redbird conversation had felt like a reveal. Now I was shutting her down.

Still, while I didn’t want to be on the receiving end of lies, I had to press on. I’d waited four years, and our moment had finally come.

M: So are you really going to tell me that you didn’t go into Dealey Plaza that day? Is that what you’re really going to tell me after all this?

 J: Yes.

M: Really. Because that’s hard to believe. You had all those cameras with you in the plane and all those reporters—and you didn’t go in?

 J: Mmm-hmm.

M: So…you didn’t pick up one of those movie cameras—and you didn’t go in there to Dealey Plaza to shoot the president?

 J: No.

M: Reeeeaaally? Because, you know, I know you really well by now, right? I mean, I’ve gotten to know you really well now. And that’s what you want to tell me? That you didn’t go into Dealey Plaza in order to shoot the president with a movie camera?

 J: Well, if you know me really well, then you don’t have to ask me that question.

Our eyes were locked, but I couldn’t tell who was winning. I exhaled and leaned back. It was over. I’d hit her with what I knew, or what I thought I knew, and she’d held her ground.

Up to this point, I was following a plan that I’d been rehearsing. She’d seen it coming, and little that had just transpired was a surprise to either of us. As I sat back and took in the Mexican sun, I pondered the fact that after I stood up from this table, I was unlikely ever to get a chance to ask her again about Kennedy’s death. I actually had time to think about what areas of the crime I felt I understood and where I was most in the dark.

What was I really after? I’d struck out on confession. She gave up nothing about who else had been there. If I could get one last piece of information, what would it be? And whenever I asked myself that question, I came back to the same murky area. My next probe would focus on the motive for the assassination of President Kennedy.

M: So I’m curious about something that I’ve never understood. I wasn’t an adult then, so I am interested in your perspective. You know how people hate Obama? I mean, really hate him. I can be disappointed in a president, but I don’t understand hating any president like some people do. Now, with Kennedy, I understand that some people hated him in the same way some people now hate Obama, maybe more. Even on the day he died, someone placed hateful ads in a Dallas paper against him. They just couldn’t stand him. You were alive then, and you heard how people felt about Kennedy. Can you explain why anyone back then came to hate the guy so much?

 J: He was too liberal.

M: So it was politics?

 J: Yes.

M: Domestic politics or foreign?

 J: Domestic.

M: Okay…. But what about how he screwed up with the Bay of Pigs? That was pretty bad, him leaving all those people hanging with no support.

 J: (silence)

M: What about that?

 J: No, it was his politics. The president isn’t elected anymore. The president doesn’t run things. It’s run by special interests, money, and people with money. They can buy a president, and it’s been that way for a very long time.

From there, our conversation drifted to various modern presidents and her opinion of their intellect. Bush W.—not smart enough to be president. Obama—likable and competent. Bush Sr.—very capable and a friend of hers. Kennedy—a brilliant intellect and orator. I could tell she had serious reservations about Kennedy, but I never was able to excavate them.

I’d done what I could. After we put down our swords, I retreated to the beach with my thoughts. The weight of being the only person here asking these questions was a burden. Trips with Jerrie were exotic, stressful, exhilarating, scary, and fascinating but never exactly enjoyable, no matter what slice of paradise she selected.

With Redbird behind us, it was as if the entire journey exhaled. That night we shared a room as we always did, I in one bed, and she and Ruth, like good soldiers, in the other. I lay awake most of the night, tingling from our duel and the knowledge that I’d managed to navigate back to that day. At least I could check off that box now.

When four a.m. came in the dark of night, when fears and dreams should prevail, we were all awake and preparing. For what, I was never sure. The day perhaps, but that was some time away. Jerrie Cobb was a restless soul, and her nights were never complete. She brushed her teeth long before dawn and impatiently awaited a tardy sun. It was a time warp, a void, that occurred every day when she was ready for something that refused to arrive at the time of her choosing. It was in this solar interregnum between her day and God’s night, that I was sitting on my bed and she on hers while Ruth was somewhere else.

Suddenly she wanted to talk, and I let her take the lead.

 J: You know our conversation yesterday about politics? And how people have the feelings they do about Obama?

I knew we weren’t talking about Obama.

 J: Now, I liked Obama, and I supported him at first. But something happened about three weeks before the election, and I can put my finger on a calendar on the day it happened. On that exact day, he gave a speech, and he switched his position. Obama was bought off by a special interest on that day. And from that day forward, with him being the first, our democracy was bought off. It may have been the Koch brothers or someone else, but elections aren’t the same since then, and we don’t have a presidency anymore, but a country ruled by special interests.

My brain zinged to a day three weeks before another election that I could also point to. By then, I was well versed in the incident involving Goodwin, Barnes, and June Cobb, and I, too, understood open code. Kennedy’s switch of position that had so terribly upset June Cobb had taken place two to three weeks before that election. Now Jerrie was saying that a switched position three weeks before Obama’s election was the day she’d changed her mind about him.

I’d asked her for motive. Had she just given me the answer?

The president isn’t elected anymore. The president doesn’t run things…and it has been that way for a very long time, she said. Obama was president while we were having this conversation. Jerrie wasn’t talking about Obama. She was referring to an incident that had happened long ago, and one that had changed the course of history.

NINE

Project ZRRIFLE

9.1 QJWIN’S FINAL OPERATION

On that bitter afternoon in January 1961 when John F. Kennedy raised his right hand, the newly minted president inherited a perilous foreign policy landscape. Patrice Lumumba had been dead just three days. The CIA was hurtling toward the Bay of Pigs, and June Cobb was finalizing her letter to Juan Orta. Toppling Fidel Castro was an operation that Kennedy inherited but had not ordered, and his ambivalence toward the invasion would surely doom it.

Jerrie had once told me that she “knew Jack Kennedy,” but in what capacity, she would never say. She made that remark after we watched the movie The Butler together, where an actor portrayed President Kennedy quite poorly, in her estimation.

“I met all those presidents, and those actors didn’t look anything like them. And I knew Jack Kennedy, and that actor didn’t look anything like Jack.”

As Kennedy concluded his inaugural address, Jerrie was looking on as a special guest from the front row. When I asked how she’d scored tickets so close, she smiled and said someone had made sure her ticket was set aside at the will call window that morning.

Kennedy ended his famous speech with this weighty summary:

With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth, God’s work must truly be our own.

And as Kennedy assumed the presidency, QJWIN’s final operation, ZRRIFLE, had begun.

Operation ZRRIFLE

Five days after Kennedy moved into the White House, William Harvey and Arnold Silver sat down to map out the contours of the team’s final assignment. Their new project was named ZRRIFLE: ZR signified projects originating out of Harvey’s Division D, the code-stealing division tasked with developing an assassination unit, and RIFLE as the chosen operation’s descriptive word.

ZRRIFLE soon became QJWIN’s sole focus, and it was the longest and most complex operation conducted by this specialized team. It spanned the duration of Kennedy’s presidency and ended with a large payout to QJWIN five months after the president’s death.

Many historians have erroneously defined ZRRIFLE as encompassing the CIA’s efforts to develop the overall assassination program. That definition was laid into the record by Harvey himself. In 1975 he told the Church Committee, under oath, that in early 1961 “the White House had charged [Richard Bissell] with the Agency creating an Executive Action capability and that he would like me to explore the possibilities, the pros and cons, the assets available, techniques, methods, caveats, and so on.” Harvey also explained to a Church Committee investigator that ZRRIFLE “began as the development of an Executive Action capability,” before it evolved into a project with Roselli.

But that’s not exactly what ZRRIFLE was. The code name ZRRIFLE doesn’t appear on any agency paperwork until after Lumumba was dead and only after Orta’s attempt on Castro’s life failed.

In the fall of 1960, as we have seen, Harvey’s Division D commanded the Lumumba mission from headquarters, with several documents in QJWIN’s Africa series authored by Harvey himself. Furthermore, Harvey oversaw June Cobb’s delivery to Orta (see Chapter 7) during another assassination operation that took place before the first ZRRIFLE cable was sent. How could ZRRIFLE possibly have been the inception of an assassination program that was already in progress and was mounting two assassination missions before ZRRIFLE began?

Even Senator Church thought it seemed “so strange” that the White House ordered the exploration of a capability that was already in use, challenging Bissell with “and you didn’t say, ‘well we already have it’?” Clearly, the CIA was hip-deep into developing an assassination capability in 1960, when poisons were sent to the Congo and Harvey’s division implemented methods to eliminate Lumumba. While Harvey disavowed involvement in these early activities against Castro and Lumumba, the documentary trail ties him to both operations, leading a researcher to ponder the obvious explanation: that Harvey attempted to minimize his participation in the earliest assassination operations, and then shifted the dates of the inception of this program.

In a follow-up interview for the Church Committee in 1975, Harvey was pressed to explain more about ZRRIFLE, a topic he’d danced around during his official appearance. In that interview, Harvey tried to say that Johnny Roselli was ZRRIFLE’s primary agent and that Castro was the operational target. No one seemed to notice how that clashed with every scrap of ZRRIFLE paperwork, all of which placed the program in Europe and none of which mentioned Roselli, Cuba, or Castro.

While I’m not one to put my faith in Harvey, it’s hard to ignore that if ZRRIFLE did involve Roselli and Cuba, then the locations in ZRRIFLE were coded, and the names of personnel were coded as well.

So what was ZRRIFLE?

What ZRRIFLE Was

The best way to understand ZRRIFLE, free of Harvey’s attempts to reframe it years later, is to go back to the original sources and to look at the story told in documents drafted while the program was active.

ZRRIFLE was a project that Harvey and Silver sketched out on a notepad in late January 1961. It accelerated into action in May 1961 and was terminated in April 1964. It revolved exclusively around QJWIN, and like all of QJWIN’s projects, it appears to have taken place in Europe.

ZRRIFLE began when QJWIN was sent, with the help of a few associates, to recruit criminals in Europe for a job that was described in varying ways: sometimes as seeking “the same types QJWIN was to find [in] Dakar for same purpose,” but other times as looking for safecrackers and burglars. Once the criminals were recruited, a holding pattern ensued while QJWIN laboriously built cover and moved into position. The operation was terminated after three years of significant spending, most of which financed QJWIN’s salary, expenses, and travel.

I’d discovered more evidence that June Cobb was QJWIN than I’d ever seen presented for any other candidate for that code name. I’d unearthed the story of the extraordinary Wanda Baran, and how the early QJWIN team operated within a business run by a female con artist, without whose cover this program would have been incapacitated. I’d learned how open code worked by scouring the June Cobb file. And I now wondered if the locations and personnel in the QJWIN series were coded as well. Could those codes be cracked by comparing QJWIN’s instructions to known assassination-related events and the movements of June Cobb?

Throughout ZRRIFLE, June Cobb was based in Mexico City, and she traveled repeatedly to the United States, including to Texas. If June Cobb was QJWIN, then ZRRIFLE was based in those geographical zones.

From here forward, I will explore the theory that ZRRIFLE was not an ineffectual program targeting no one in Europe but rather was an effective operation that culminated in the assassination of President Kennedy. Before we dig more deeply into what we can learn from the real-time document trail, it’s helpful to ask the bigger question: Why would a rogue group of CIA officers turn inward against our country? And into whose hands was the awesome responsibility of this assassination program placed?

9.2 AMERICA LOST ITS GUTS

One evening while we were discussing politics and the state of the world, Jerrie summed up our country’s problems by saying, “America has lost its guts.” In World War II, the United States had done what needed to be done. We committed to that war with everything that we had, she said, and we ended it definitively by dropping the atomic bombs. That was the last time she believed our country demonstrated its mettle, and she didn’t think any president would display that fortitude again, or that the American public would stand for it. In her worldview, ruthlessness was a winning tactic. Diplomacy—not so much.

It’s hard to imagine today, but throughout the Eisenhower and Kennedy years, a school of thought at the Pentagon held that the only way the United States could win a nuclear war was by making a preemptive first strike against the Soviet Union. Air Force general Curtis LeMay vigorously championed this strategy to both presidents while bemoaning America’s loss of guts, much as Jerrie described.

But LeMay, who headed the Strategic Air Command from 1948 to 1957, then rose to chief of staff in 1961, wasn’t planning to sit back and let America go soft. He was ready to take matters into his own hands. In 1957, during an Eisenhower administration review of SAC’s methodology, he told Robert Sprague, “If I see that the Russians are amassing their planes for an attack, I’m going to knock the shit out of them before they take off the ground.” That prompted Sprague to warn, “But, General, that’s not national policy.” LeMay shot back, “I don’t care. It’s my policy. That’s what I’m going to do.”

Many Kennedy assassination researchers hold the view that rogue elements within the CIA or the military turned on JFK due to his unwillingness to commit to direct military intervention against emerging communist threats. I asked the longtime assassination researcher and author Lisa Pease why she’d concluded that CIA officers were responsible for Kennedy’s killing and what their motive could have been. She said she believed there were “two clashing worldviews held so vehemently that only one could survive. The CIA/establishment felt they had the authority to overthrow governments to serve a business agenda. Kennedy was appalled by that and didn’t want any part of that. JFK believed other countries had a right to autonomy.”

That tracks with what June Cobb discovered about Kennedy’s views during his campaign, and his views remained consistent throughout his presidency. Kennedy could have supported the Cuban exiles with U.S. military air cover at the Bay of Pigs, but he pulled back. He could have green-lit the Pentagon’s proposal of Operation Northwoods, a twisted and immoral plot to orchestrate a false flag attack on American citizens to blame Cuba as a pretext for an invasion, but that scheme failed to gain traction under his leadership. And the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis could have been the excuse for the first strike that General LeMay had been longing for. Instead, Kennedy created a back channel to Khrushchev and deescalated the conflict.

William Harvey signed on to the hardline philosophy of by any means necessary when he accepted the job of developing the CIA’s assassination capability. And into his hands was placed the awesome responsibility of creating a program that could kill a high-profile leader without leaving a trace. Only a tiny cadre of CIA officers were even aware that the program existed, and once it was created, Harvey’s hit squad would be activated on subtexts and innuendo gleaned from high-level meetings at the executive branch, not even on direct orders, to maintain plausible deniability at the top. This covert mechanism for activation, and the problems that could arise from it, were beautifully described by the Church Committee in its 1975 interim report, where it explained that “the President may, in fact, not be fully and accurately informed about a sensitive operation because he failed to receive the ‘circumlocutious’ message.”

The problem with such a powerful and invisible tool controlled by so few is the question of whose finger is placed on its trigger. A person ruthless enough to create such a system should hardly be the ethicist determining its use. But the secrecy that obscured the accountability of this program was part of its design, and William King Harvey, for all his ingenuity, was not a stable man. He hated the Kennedys with a passion and made no bones about expressing that disdain. Harvey was also a lifelong alcoholic whose benders got him in trouble in his FBI days and factored into his demotion at the CIA—a stinging rebuke that also stemmed from his insertion of covert teams into Cuba during the missile crisis without proper authorization.

As for Curtis LeMay, he never did take matters into his hands by initiating a first strike on America’s behalf. He was swayed by the military’s code of honor and ultimately deferred to his commanders in chief on the matter of using nuclear force. But what if you had come to believe that the president was the enemy? That he was appeasing, and perhaps even welcoming onto our shores, the communist forces that you had spent your life battling? And what if you had the power to alter the trajectory of the nation to suit that worldview and could do so invisibly? All it would take would be having the guts.

In Harvey’s most candid Church Committee interview in 1975, he scoffed at the idea of developing an assassination program in a reserve capacity, calling the idea “ridiculous.” He went on to explain how he thought a real assassination operation should be constructed, a recommendation he claimed he’d shared with Dick Bissell:

The one sure way to do it, or at least the only one close to having a chance at secure success, was to simply appoint a single senior officer to do everything: to run the operation, kill the person, bury the body, and tell no one.

So we know how Harvey would manage an assassination securely: the fewer that knew about it the better. ZRRIFLE was born on January 26, 1961. That was when Harvey sat down with Silver, the senior officer he’d appointed to manage the project.

9.3 THE CREATION DOCUMENT, JANUARY 26, 1961

The banner across the top simply said “Project ZRRIFLE,” but the plan was anything but simple. Nine pages of cryptic notes followed, with each man scribbling down thoughts about his area of responsibility. Arnold Silver was consumed with operational details, while William Harvey focused on a covert weapon he was developing for assassination. I’ve dubbed it “The Creation Document” because it’s the earliest record in the ZRRIFLE series and the most candid window into ZRRIFLE’s plan.

The first seven pages were written by Arnold Silver and the last two by William Harvey.

Silver’s Handwritten Notes, pages 1–7

Silver stated at the outset that ZRRIFLE’s primary activity was the spotting and development of agents for use in the program. In that respect, it’s similar to previous operations we’ve seen, wherein QJWIN recruited personnel for assassinations. But in the first paragraph, Silver tells us there is something new and different about ZRRIFLE:

Agents will be spotted in several areas, including the United States.

That simple sentence flies in the face of the exhaustive real-time documentary record that places QJWIN’s missions and recruitments strictly overseas. An aspect of ZRRIFLE was being planned for America.

In the second paragraph, Silver claims that ZRRIFLE will be a code-stealing operation, but that is a cover story hiding the assassination recruitments. Harvey later admitted as much in his testimony to the Church Committee, where he said that the code-stealing story, while partially true, had a “dual purpose,” and said that if ZRRIFLE had actually recruited “an agent for assassination or the targeting of any target, or the mounting of an operation, it would have been under this [code-stealing] as a cover.”

Silver then explains that the project will be housed in Division D, Harvey’s division, and will never discuss targets in communications. These two points are true and establish the dynamic. Silver is obscuring the program’s objectives while revealing true operational details. He adds that local CIA stations can be used “as needed,” and since that’s an operational detail, it’s the type of information that’s likely to be true.

The next section deals with the “background” of the program. Here again Silver tries to say that ZRRIFLE was born from the need to steal codes in the summer of 1960. But we know that the pressing need that arose was the elimination of Castro and Lumumba, and that QJWIN’s first mission was targeting Lumumba, not stealing codes. Once again we get some truth with a healthy dose of fiction.

In the “Operational Assets” section, Silver affirms that QJWIN is the project’s central agent. As always, QJWIN’s biography matches Jose Mankel’s, but just when Silver is going to tell us what QJWIN did in October 1960, the sentence cuts off abruptly, and the following page goes missing. Missing pages don’t instill confidence that we’re getting the full story, and in the seventh line of that paragraph, Silver appears to correct QJWIN’s gender pronoun from his first thought to the word he.

Silver then uses the third page to lay out ZRRIFLE’s budget, most of which will fund QJWIN’s salary, travel, and support. After calculating the total, Silver adds:

Pay for agents on completion of jobs?

Assassinations don’t come cheap, which is probably why Harvey routed ZRRIFLE’s finances through Luxembourg station. Like Switzerland, Luxembourg offered its clientele a secretive banking system, a favorite of criminals, thanks to the ability to funnel hidden payouts to anonymous participants. Silver doesn’t list those payments, but he acknowledges they are part of the plan.

Next, Silver ticks off a litany of concerns, number one being that “legal” and “ethical” considerations may impact “morale” on the project. Political problems and “non-attributability” are also among Silver’s top worries.

In a lengthy section titled “Maximum Security,” Silver establishes the command structure. For case-officering, tracing, and managing QJWIN’s search, ZRRIFLE will have one focal point of control—a role Silver ultimately assumed, as proven by the real-time document record. Silver then insists that the deputy director of plans bestow full authority to this person. Over its three-year term, two DDPs would authorize the project, Richard Bissell and Richard Helms.

Then Silver tosses out a bombshell:

DCI officially advised?

At the time, the director of Central Intelligence was the legendary Allen Dulles, whose job was to advise and take orders from the president. The underlined word here is important. By underlining officially, Silver is telling us that ZRRIFLE’s oversight by Dulles might be concealed in its paperwork.

This concealment puts ZRRIFLE into a completely different category from the assassination attempts on foreign leaders. Dulles’s code names appear openly on both the Castro and Lumumba operations, proving he was not only officially advised but was in command. Only in ZRRIFLE’s paperwork are Dulles’s pseudonyms and cryptonyms missing. The spymaster was, however, named to the Warren Commission, affording him a role in the inquiry into the president’s murder.

Silver then tells us how important the recruitment of fellow CIA agents will be. After stating that the project should stay within the CIA and make no approach to other agencies, Silver appears to contradict himself by saying ZRRIFLE won’t use agents who have worked with agencies that “tracing by opposition would reveal,” meaning those known to foreign intelligence. For a moment, you might think this means that ZRRIFLE would avoid the use of all U.S. government employees. But Silver clarifies that he will use “already tested assets (e.g., Mankel) in the search.” Mankel was a CIA employee, so ZRRIFLE was absolutely using CIA agents. The key was, they had to be untraceable.

Silver also wants CIA personnel who can pass as foreigners. Criminals, long a staple of QJWIN’s operations, would be recruited.

Next, Silver tells us who will get the blame:

[ZRRIFLE] should include provisions for blaming Sovs or Czechs in case of blow.

You might assume that the United States would always want to blame the Soviets, and I overlooked this for the longest time because it seemed so reasonable. But one day it dawned on me. When it comes to assassinating a foreign leader who’s embracing communism, blaming the Soviet Union just isn’t a realistic strategy. Would the Soviet Union really appear to be guilty in the death of Fidel Castro, for example? A better idea, and one the CIA frequently employed, was to blame a local opposition force. Orta was a Cuban national who had turned against Fidel, not a Soviet operative. Lumumba was murdered by his local enemies, not the KGB. Cover stories work better when they make sense. But for a covert operation on American soil, blaming the Soviets would be an excellent fit.

In point nine of the “Maximum Security” section, we learn that ZRRIFLE “should have phony 201 in RI [records division] to backstop this, all documents therein forged and backdated.” A 201 file is the dossier the CIA keeps on each employee, asset, and person of interest. That would include June Cobb, Jose Mankel, Lee Harvey Oswald, and many more. For ZRRIFLE, according to Silver, a file will be created to give a false backstory for someone. Since QJWIN was the project’s sole agent, this could be QJWIN’s 201 file.

Silver’s handwritten arrow pointing from the phony file section to the “blame the Soviets” section suggests that something in this file will throw blame at the Soviets. Silver adds that the file will appear to be a “CE” or counterespionage file, meaning counterintelligence, the division that protects the agency against enemy penetrations. June Cobb’s 201 file contains extensive falsifications, and Pierson ran June out of the CIA’s Counterintelligence Division.

Silver’s next entry jumped out at me as his most provocative suggestion:

Possible use of staffer for the action

Executive action is a more palatable term for assassination, and Harvey and the Church Committee interviewers used it more than forty times throughout his testimony and interviews. On a few occasions, Harvey substituted direct action or simply the word action for executive action. While action could mean covert action in some intelligence contexts, in Harvey’s testimony about ZRRIFLE to Congress, it meant the direct act of killing the target. There is little reason to believe it meant anything different in this document.

By writing about the “possible use of staffer for the action,” Silver is saying that despite all this complex structuring for ZRRIFLE, when a trigger is finally pulled, the triggerman, or woman, might simply be a CIA staff agent. That means the exhaustive searches, coded communications, criminal recruitments, and fabricated files would all be elaborate misdirections to conceal the true nature of the deed.

At its essence, ZRRIFLE might involve a straightforward killing, supervised by CIA officers and enacted by a CIA staff agent, making it look like another person or country was guilty of the crime. It’s much easier to pull a silver dollar out of your pocket than to make it appear that you pulled one from behind a person’s ear.

Silver has shown us how unique and different ZRRIFLE was. Here are some key points from Silver’s operational details:

ZRRIFLE…

will center on one crucial agent, QJWIN

may not officially inform the CIA director

will be spotting assets within the United States

will use local CIA stations in some capacity

will be using CIA assets who pass as foreigners

will recruit assets in criminal circles

will be constructed to blame the Soviet bloc in case of blow

will involve the creation of a false 201 file within the agency’s paperwork

may use a CIA staffer to commit the killing

The Creation Document: Harvey’s Notes, pages 8–9

William Harvey’s two pages yield insight into a topic rarely committed to paper: assassination weaponry. When he testified to the Church Committee, he said his notes referred, in part, to a meeting he held the day before with Technical Services director Sidney Gottlieb. Harvey then told the committee that this operation involved:

A very sensitive and unusual technique of assassination

Poison pills had been in use for centuries. Rifles were hardly novel. ZRRIFLE was planning on deploying something new.

Harvey’s ruminations revolved around something he called “The Magic Button.” Those words appear at the top of the page and serve as a header for all that follows. When the Church Committee asked Harvey what the Magic Button was, he admitted it was probably his euphemism for the technology he had discussed with Gottlieb the day before.

Right below “The Magic Button,” Harvey doodled a schematic. To my eye, it looks like a pistol-like contraption with a triggering mechanism shooting something forward. “Not a TSD problem” is also underlined in this section. Had Harvey ordered a new concealed weapon? And had Gottlieb assured Harvey that he would keep this weapon out of the Technical Services Division? Evidently so. Harvey told Burt Wides in his 1975 Church Committee interview that Gottlieb assured him that the CIA’s Technical Services would not be involved with the other two or three people working with Gottlieb on the request.

FIGURE 9A. William Harvey’s doodle on the ZRRIFLE Creation Document below the words “The Magic Button.”

Farther down the page, Harvey wrote, “framework of Sid’s job” and “Elint R & D memo. Ledford.” Harvey seems to be referring to a Research and Development memo involving ELINT, Electronic Intelligence, a signals intelligence program in the Department of Defense. Harvey doodled a box around Ledford for emphasis. Was a person named “Ledford” involved in the creation of this technology, and if so who were they?

Harvey claimed in his 1975 Church Committee interview that he was referring to “Dick Ledford,” a name I’ve been unable to link to Harvey’s contemporaries at the agency. But according to numerous documents available in the CIA’s online reading room, the agency did employ a Colonel Jack Ledford, an Air Force weapons specialist who supervised the U-2 spy-plane development for the agency. Ledford managed the CIA’s Office for Special Activities, and during ZRRIFLE, he was coordinating technologies for Gottlieb’s Technical Services and for ELINT, both. Jack Ledford ticks off every box for being Harvey’s Ledford.

Technologies under Ledford’s purview, in addition to his oversight of the U-2, included specialized camera systems, infrared systems, and radar system developments. Harvey’s comment “contra-distinct from U-2” further supports the idea he was referring to Jack Ledford. Was Harvey’s new technology “contra-distinct from U-2” because it was coming through the same developmental pipeline at a department Jack Ledford managed?

Coding ZRRIFLE’s communications also seems to have been at the top of Harvey’s mind. In the next section, he jotted down “Translating Machine” and “ with C.B.” Harvey told a congressional interviewer that “C.B.” meant “country boy,” his nickname for Frank Rowlett, the NSA code master whose invention, SIGABA, was the greatest “translating machine” of all time. SIGABA was a bulky desktop system that could encrypt a message, send it, and decode it on the receiving end via a sister system. Harvey told the investigators that he had heard Rowlett had a new system that could translate “from the printed word.”

At the bottom of the first page, Harvey made a list of project insiders. “B-WKH-AS” recites the command structure—Bissell to Harvey, then Silver. Below that are “Sid,” for Sidney Gottlieb, and “Resew,” a name I haven’t linked to anyone but who might have been on the technical team since he’s listed beside Gottlieb. Then above everyone, Harvey wrote, “Max at ⅔.” Since the field team hasn’t been mentioned, this could be them. At the crucial nexus on the ground, did Harvey’s strike force consist of just two or three people?

Harvey closed by echoing several points of Silver’s, including “Cover file—create it from RIS or about it—non sov.” RIS stands for Russian Intelligence Services. When you combine Harvey’s direction that the cover file should be about Russian intelligence, with Silver describing a false 201 file blaming the Soviets, it implies that ZRRIFLE involves the creation of a false 201 file wherein a CIA asset appears to have come under Soviet control. Therefore QJWIN’s 201 file could contain a false story that they were recruited by Russian Intelligence.

Here is a summary of key points from Harvey’s notes:

ZRRIFLE…

uses a new and unique assassination weapon developed by Gottlieb and others

involves technology coordinated with Ledford and U-2-level engineering

uses coded communications and may deploy sophisticated encryption

involves Bissell, Harvey, Silver, Gottlieb, “Resew,” and possibly two or three others

will falsify a CIA cover file to place the blame on Russian intelligence

has a 201 file that may include a false narrative that QJWIN was recruited by Soviets

It’s important to keep Harvey and Silver’s original plan in mind while comparing it to the known events surrounding Kennedy’s death, and to remain attuned to the types of synchronicities that we’ve seen before, where two things that appear to be separate begin moving in tandem.

The same week that Harvey and Silver were drafting this document at CIA headquarters, Marguerite Oswald made an appearance just one block away. She was visiting the State Department to demand information about the whereabouts of her son, Lee Harvey Oswald. He was still living in Minsk and was working at a radio factory. Marguerite told the government to contact her son and tell him to resume his correspondence with her. Ten days later, Oswald petitioned for his return to America.

9.4 OSWALD AND FALSE DEFECTORS

Lee Harvey Oswald will forever be known as the assassin who killed President Kennedy, even though a tremendous amount of controversy has erupted over his true status in that crime. According to the Warren Commission, on November 22, 1963, Oswald smuggled a rifle into the Texas School Book Depository and fired three shots at Kennedy from a window on the building’s sixth floor. For the next half-century, most Americans were familiar with the hardscrabble biography that brought Oswald to that moment, but today all but a few could use a quick refresher.

Oswald was born in New Orleans to an unstable single mother and endured a chaotic childhood complete with short residencies, educational truancy, and handoffs to relatives. As soon as he was able, he enlisted in the Marines, and after two years of training, he went on his first overseas deployment. As a radar operator in Atsugi, Japan, he monitored the U-2 spy plane missions from the base. That role, on such a highly classified project, prompted speculation that it positioned him for recruitment into U.S. intelligence. The CIA denies that Oswald was ever an intelligence agent.

In September 1959, Oswald abruptly left the Marines and defected to the Soviet Union. He’d done little to conceal his infatuation with Marxism from his fellow enlisted men, and he spent his free time retreating to his bunk to study the Russian language.

Throughout the Cold War, defections usually flowed from the Soviet Union to the United States, but in the years surrounding Oswald’s defection, a smattering of young men renounced America in favor of Soviet authoritarian rule. Many, like Oswald, made the leap directly from employment within the U.S. military-industrial complex, prompting speculation about their true motives. Some, like Oswald, soon returned to the United States, further clouding the idea they were committed to life under communism.

Did Oswald Have CIA Ties?

Over 50 percent of Americans today believe Oswald did not act alone in Kennedy’s killing, and 31 percent believe the CIA was primarily responsible. Many of these theories were born from the contradictory evidence presented to the Warren Commission, and they’ve persisted as the CIA has continued to withhold documents that could shed more light on Oswald and his strange backstory.

Oswald’s own mother believed her son was a government agent, and she said so to the Warren Commission. In the wake of the killing, Robert Kennedy directly confronted John McCone, the CIA director, to ask if they did it. An unstable mother and a traumatized brother could be dismissed as overly emotional, but the Warren Commission turned a blind eye to evidence that could have substantiated such suspicions. So much so that Senator Richard Schweiker, who served on the Church Committee in 1975, said, “I frankly believe that we have shown that the [investigation of the] John F. Kennedy assassination was snuffed out before it even began, and that the fatal mistake the Warren Commission made was not to use its own investigators, but instead to rely on the CIA and FBI personnel, which played directly into the hands of senior intelligence officials who directed the cover-up.” Schweiker ultimately concluded that Oswald was the product of a fake defector program run by the CIA.

No declassified paperwork shows Oswald’s enlistment in a false defector program, and no documents in the JFK Assassination Records Collection prove the existence of such a program, but Schweiker may have based his opinion on records he’d seen that continue to be withheld. While there is no documentary proof of the program, some of the best work linking Oswald to a false defector operation has been done by authors who analyzed the handling of Oswald’s 201 file, as well as the route he took to and from the Soviet Union and his treatment after his return.

Entire volumes have been dedicated to this analysis, and authors like Peter Dale Scott, John Newman, David Talbot, Bill Simpich, Gaeton Fonzi, and Lisa Pease, and Oliver Stone’s 2021 documentary JFK: Destiny Betrayed, have explored how the CIA’s handling of Oswald’s file indicates a strategic defection for counterintelligence purposes and bears little resemblance to procedures that should have been followed were Oswald a true turncoat. Newman’s Oswald and the CIA, and his follow-up book, Uncovering Popov’s Mole, are excellent starting points in understanding how Oswald’s defection was strategically useful to U.S. intelligence.

But while there are as many views on Oswald and his backstory as there are authors, I came into this quest because I’d uncovered a new clue. I knew that Jerrie Cobb, whose life shadowed June Cobb’s, sat on a runway at Redbird Airport waiting for someone or something before she could take off under pressure. I knew she wanted to get out before Air Force One locked down her airspace and that she waited even after hearing the news of Kennedy’s death. I also knew she took off only after receiving a second piece of news—and I’d deduced that the second news, based on the timing she outlined, matched up to the announcement of Oswald’s arrest.

If Jerrie’s exit at Redbird was contingent on her hearing the news of Oswald’s arrest, and if Jerrie’s life was intertwined with June Cobb’s as a CIA cover, then Lee Harvey Oswald was a covert player in intelligence, too. If so, Oswald hadn’t entered that moment with no intelligence background. He would have been a longtime intelligence agent or asset, meaning his strange expedition to the Soviet Union and back was an intelligence operation as well.

For those reasons and more, for the remainder of this book, I will build on the theory that Oswald had CIA ties and was a false defector to the Soviet Union, and I will compare his trajectory as an intelligence asset to the needs of ZRRIFLE.

Oswald’s Usefulness as a False Defector

Try as it might, the KGB was never able to prove Oswald was a spy, even though that was its operational assumption. If the KGB was right, then his backstop had withstood scrutiny, and his two years in the Soviet Union bolstered his communist credibility. If Oswald was a false defector, then he beautifully met Silver’s criteria as laid out in the Creation Document. He would have been a tested intelligence agent whose connections to the agency were untraceable.

Oswald began seeking his homecoming by writing to the U.S. embassy in Moscow ten days after the Creation Document was drafted. Were those two events linked? It’s hard to be sure. But if so, then a signal would have had to reach Oswald in the Soviet Union to trigger his decision. That could have been achieved in the form of the overture from his mother, but a deep-cover agent also could be signaled through shortwave numbers stations and signals in radio broadcasts. Upon receipt of his letter, the U.S. embassy, which housed a CIA station, warmly invited the defector to come in for a visit.

Oswald wasn’t the only defector whom Uncle Sam welcomed back with open arms. Two weeks before Oswald, scientist Robert Webster defected while at a Moscow plastics conference. While negotiating his defection with the Soviets, Webster offered to share his expertise in fiberglass rocketry technology to sweeten their interest. Oswald had done much the same, by highlighting his radar experience, a dangle that was pregnant with the possibility that he had classified information on the U-2. After three years in the Soviet Union, Webster, like Oswald, orchestrated his return.

False defection operations played a fascinating role in the Cold War and were useful for spreading disinformation or planting innocuous information to see where it went. The Russians were the acknowledged masters of this tactic, so much so that senior CIA officers were forever divided about which Russian defectors were real and which were plants. Split opinions about the defectors Yuri Nosenko and Anatoli Golitsin effectively stymied the CIA’s use of information from them both. In Lee Harvey Oswald’s case, numerous scholars like Newman and Scott have speculated a primary goal of his defection may have been to induce a Russian mole at headquarters to seek information based on leads he provided.

Mole-hunting operations, like the one proposed as the purpose for Oswald’s defection, are complex tactical schemes that an elite team of CIA officers in the Counterintelligence Division managed. June Cobb’s case officer, Jean Pierson, worked in the Counterintelligence Division, and in the summer of 1960, Pierson was coordinating with the elite mole-hunting unit about matters pertaining to Cobb.

June Cobb Met with Defectors During Their Flight, August 1960

In the summer of 1960, not long after June’s recruitment into the agency, the Soviet Union was on the receiving end of two American men who were defecting together. William Martin and Bernon Mitchell were NSA cryptologists who claimed they were disillusioned with the United States because American reconnaissance missions were intruding into Soviet airspace and could trigger a nuclear war. That prompted them to leave Washington, D.C., for Mexico City, ostensibly on a vacation, where they quickly hopped a plane to Havana and stayed for a month, before resurfacing in Moscow on September 6, 1960.

Like Oswald and Webster, Martin and Mitchell dangled classified knowledge upon their arrival. Unlike Oswald and Webster, according to the CIA’s Office of Security, these men were spotted with June Cobb “during their [defection] flight.”

Cobb’s boss, William Harvey, and his assistant, Anita Potocki, started monitoring the FBI investigation into the missing men in mid-August, before it was even clear that they’d defected or where they were. Potocki feverishly kept tabs on every new lead, which she synthesized into long memos for Harvey. The Martin and Mitchell project was given its own cryptonym, ZRGRACE, with the same ZR signifier used on QJWIN’s closely held projects.

Days after the defectors surfaced in Moscow in early September, a report landed on Harvey’s desk alerting him that the FBI knew the “identity of the person who met the Martin-Mitchell plane in Havana.” While the early documents avoided typing her name, the person who met the defectors was CIA agent June Cobb. June was working in Havana that summer organizing a student youth congress, when a witness saw her meet the defectors at the airport. She may have been there to give them a ride, since days later Mitchell spoke at the youth congress she organized.

That puts June Cobb in a whole lot of contact with Martin and Mitchell during what was supposed to be their secret defection, and Cobb was working for the CIA’s Counterintelligence Division at the time.

Documents in Cobb’s file from this period cast even more suspicion on her role with them. A memo penned by Jean Pierson in August 1960 cryptically boasted about Cobb’s ability to get “stamps autographed by Castro” and how “June could get it done.” Stamps with Castro’s signature could refer to travel permits and visas, which Cobb was already obtaining for American travelers in her role for Castro’s government. Her prowess at obtaining them was touted a few weeks after she met the defectors but while they were still seeking passage to the Soviet Union.

The possibility that Cobb met the defectors innocently and had nothing to do with them operationally is refuted by a CIA memo drafted two years after the defection. In that memo, the Office of Security alerted Harvey that “Viola June Cobb” was now of interest to the FBI “in view of the allegation that she may have been in contact with them [Martin and Mitchell] during their flight.” But an invisible hand always rescued June Cobb, and at the bottom of the memo, someone scribbled:

NSA or CIC [army counterintelligence] will wash out the allegation, I assume.

If Martin and Mitchell had decided to defect to the Soviet Union on their own, secretly, how would June Cobb have known to greet them at the Havana airport? Why was Bernon Mitchell booked to speak at the youth congress she organized, an obscure event with intelligence ties? Martin and Mitchell have always been seen as two genuinely disaffected Americans who, unlike Oswald, remained in the Soviet Union, but this new piece of evidence about Cobb suggests there was more to that story.

This intersection between June Cobb, William Harvey, and the defectors brings up as many questions as it answers. Did Cobb provide Martin and Mitchell with a pretext to go to Havana to participate in her youth congress? Could Cobb’s role with defectors have had something to do with them needing safe passage on to the Soviet Union? And if so, did Harvey or Cobb play a similar role in the defection of Lee Harvey Oswald?

Cobb’s alliance with Harvey was at the molten core of her deepest secrets, yet only a few documents reveal their hidden link. Whenever the thread connecting them appears, case officer Jean Pierson invariably sewed that seam. It was Pierson who sent Orta’s file up to Harvey when that operation hit trouble, and it was Pierson who offered Harvey a personal briefing with Cobb. If we are looking for the keeper of Cobb’s secrets, and Harvey’s, too, Jean Pierson would appear to hold that key.

9.5 CASE OFFICER DUALITY

Many a sleepless night I lay awake wondering if the double identity deception engulfing June Cobb was a one-off or standard operating procedure. Cobb’s case officer, Jean Pierson, gave me my answer.

A complete collection of all the JFK documents related to “Jean T. Pierson” revealed an association with June Cobb and not much else. During my years of working with the documents, I’d come to recognize that as a telltale sign of a CIA pseudonym: a name seen on paperwork with a compartmentalized role that pertains to one topic or assignment but lacks the breadth and scope of an actual career.

I was never able to find genealogical evidence of a real-life woman named “Jean T. Pierson” who had the level of education, accomplishment, and travel indicative of a career CIA officer. Elite intelligence officers usually leave a footprint that includes academic excellence and extracurricular achievement. Women’s biographies often feature wartime service to country or trailblazing pursuits that defy gender norms. If this backstory is missing, it suggests an alias, a pseudonym, or identity displacement.

I’d also seen Pierson’s name spelled “Pearson” just often enough throughout these documents to make me wonder if the alternate spelling was a mistake or a clue. Having struck out searching for “Jean Pierson,” I tried “Jean Pearson.” What I found was the answer to the SAT question: June Cobb is to Jean Pierson as Jerrie Cobb is to…

Jean Hanmer Pearson

In the rarefied air of women with wings, Jean Pearson and Jerrie Cobb were both luminous stars. Pearson was an accomplished aviatrix and Detroit Free Press journalist, one of the few women who could match Jerrie from throttle to tail. Born a decade before Cobb, Pearson answered World War II’s call by joining the WASPs, Women Airforce Service Pilots, where she ferried all manner of battlecraft to American airfields. Pearson’s boss in the WASPs was Jerrie’s foe Jackie Cochran, who both funded and torpedoed the women’s astronaut program.

Jerrie’s and Jean’s flight paths were a virtual cobweb of intersections. Both flew military jets, knew Air Force generals, trained with the male astronauts, and explored the South Pole. Both had their own airplanes with freedom to travel, and they entered the same air races and joined the same flight clubs. Both flew their own airplanes to attend those events in the same cities and stayed at the same hotels, breathing the very same air—especially during June Cobb’s operational years.

How hard would it have been for Jerrie to meet up with Jean at, say, the American Astronautical Society meeting in Dallas, an event they both attended on January 18, 1961? Or at the Tulsa “Peaceful Uses of Space” conference, where they listened to speakers on May 27, 1961? My goodness, this type of incidental proximity would be a gold mine for a case-officering relationship—one woman could drop by the other’s hotel room, and no one would be the wiser. Then referring to them by different names in the CIA’s paperwork would conceal the evidence they ever met up.

The pattern of aviator Pearson shadowing Jerrie’s every move started at the very beginning. In her autobiography, Woman into Space, Jerrie wrote that her space quest began in September 1959, at an Air Force convention in Miami Beach, where she randomly bumped into two NASA insiders. Dr. Randolph Lovelace and General Don Flickinger famously invited her to try her hand at the astronaut tests on the spot. She jumped at the idea.

Aviatrix Jean Pearson also attended that same event. She received an award for journalism one night, while Flickinger and Lovelace were honored the next. That puts Pearson in the tiny group of honorees at the same event where Jerrie was asked to take the astronaut tests. Funny thing is—Jerrie wasn’t the first woman to get her hands on NASA’s equipment. Jean Pearson was.

That’s right—Jerrie Cobb, widely hailed as the first, actually followed in Jean Pearson’s footsteps. Shortly after everyone’s rendezvous at the convention, NASA rolled out the welcome mat for Pearson to cover the Mercury men. But somehow, during her visit, the journalist put down her pencil and stepped into a flight suit. She then not only leapfrogged Jerrie onto a sophisticated simulator, she jumped ahead of the male astronauts, too. Thrills Await Seven Astronauts On Whirligig was Pearson’s jaw-dropping scoop on December 8, 1959.

It’s hard to imagine why a Detroit Free Press science reporter would have been allowed to pilot NASA’s tumbler, the MASTIF, before John Glenn had his chance on it, but that’s exactly how things unfolded. Jean was photographed flying the machine in December 1959; the astronauts trained on it in February, and Jerrie flew it that April. I have yet to find anyone beyond Jean, Jerrie, and the Mercury men who’ve ever flown this machine.

That’s some enviable access for a local reporter with no syndication, but amazing entrée into our military-industrial complex was all in a day’s work for Jean Pearson. Her beat included NASA, NORAD, nuclear warfare, germ warfare, supersonic flight, ballistic missile defense, and cutting-edge medical advancements. Her rendezvous with national secrets began during World War II, where she handled classified information for the navy’s fleet admirals. Her 2010 obituary in Michigan’s Grosse Point News claimed she trained alongside the Mercury astronauts for six weeks—not in a separate program, but with them—and that she remained lifelong friends with John Glenn. Jerrie, similarly, told me she spent much more time with the astronauts than has been reflected in the Mercury 13 books and films.

FIGURE 9B. Left: Jean Pearson’s Detroit Free Press article about flying the MASTIF trainer in December 1959. Right: Jerrie Cobb on the MASTIF trainer in April 1960.

And like June Cobb, I suspect Pierson’s stable of identities didn’t stop at just two. Gerry Hemming, an American soldier of fortune and a member of June’s covert network of allies in Cuba and Central America, pegged as Cobb’s case officer a woman named “Betty Vetter.” Several CIA documents, where “Vetter” managed aspects of Cobb’s operational support, reinforce that claim. Sure enough, I discovered that “Jean Pierson” and “Betty Vetter” shared the same CIA phone extension on the same day while handling the same matter pertaining to Cobb.

FIGURE 9C. On February 13, 1961, Betty Vetter and Jean Pierson were both at CIA phone extension 8565 while handling the same matter regarding June Cobb.

Here is a photo of aviator Jean Pearson compared to a picture of Betty Vetter (Figure 9D).

FIGURE 9D. Left: Jean Pearson, journalist and aviator. Right: Betty Vetter, said by Gerry Hemming to be June’s case officer.

It probably won’t come as a surprise that the aviator-journalist Jean Pearson and science writer Betty Vetter appear to be two completely separate people who lived full lives with families, careers, husbands, and genealogical records. They even died in different years and had separate funerals. And while the photographs of the women in Figure 9D bear a tremendous resemblance, not all their pictures match so well.

Jean Pearson and Betty Vetter shared a vast set of astonishing similarities, comparable to what we’ve seen with June and Jerrie Cobb, while also laying down a tremendous volume of evidence that they were two different people. While Betty Vetter is not publicly acknowledged as a CIA agent, James Angleton’s widow attended her funeral. Vetter lived out her days in the D.C. region and collated science employment statistics for a nonprofit think tank.

Jean Pierson served as Cobb’s case officer from June 1960 until she left Cobb’s detail in early 1962. That means Pierson wasn’t on board during the second half of operation ZRRIFLE.

So if Jean Pierson wasn’t fully committed to ZRRIFLE, who was?

9.6 ZRRIFLE BEGINS, SPRING OF 1961

According to the Creation Document, project ZRRIFLE had a dual focus: (1) recruiting members of the team and (2) developing a new assassination weapon. Work on both tasks began shortly after the Creation Document was drafted, and QJWIN was involved in both assignments.

In these early months, Harvey was overseeing Pierson and Cobb’s delivery to Juan Orta during the failed attempt on Castro, which may or may not have been part of ZRRIFLE. What is more clear is that during this initial phase, Silver assumed the role of QJWIN’s case officer and met with the agent in late March 1961. That meeting took place two days after Pierson told Harvey she would be happy to arrange a debriefing with Cobb.

QJWIN Debriefs with Silver About a Special Gun, March 31, 1961

In the waning days of March, Silver traveled to an army base in Frankfurt, where he reserved a safe house for a debriefing with QJWIN. There the two met for several days while QJWIN was grilled about an incident that had occurred back in 1953 or ’54.

Supposedly, all those many years ago, QJWIN had been asked to “obtain a sample of a new model Belgian gun.” Silver was suddenly worried about the security of those interactions. While under the scrutiny of a polygraph, QJWIN was asked to list every single person they’d spoken to about the gun and detail the circumstances of those conversations.

Of course, this urgent interrogation about an eight-year-old incident makes little sense, unless there was renewed interest in a weapon put into development long before. What makes more sense, and what does connect to QJWIN’s known operations, is that Silver pressed QJWIN about a recent encounter with the Magic Button and the people who were designing it. After all, QJWIN was the only agent in project ZRRIFLE, which according to Harvey’s notes involved the development of a new assassination weapon.

QJWIN listed four people who knew about the “Belgian” weapon, two of whose names are still redacted because that information is still highly classified. One of those QJWIN named was called “Reissiu,” which sounds a lot like the “Resew” whom Harvey listed beside Gottlieb on the technical team. QJWIN described “Reissiu” as an American official who worked at a U.S. airbase. That matches Harvey’s comment, “contra-distinct from U-2,” suggesting that the weapon was coming through a U.S. airbase that QJWIN had recently visited.

If Silver was using a Belgian gun as code for Harvey’s new technology, then other aspects of this report might be coded as well. For example, did QJWIN’s debriefing really happen in Germany, or was that location another misdirection? If QJWIN was Cobb, it’s possible she was whisked to Frankfurt for the meeting, but it’s also possible the conversation didn’t happen overseas.

More important, if Cobb was QJWIN, then the mission Silver informed Harvey that he was giving QJWIN at this meeting took place on American soil, because that’s where June Cobb was.

QJWIN’s Mission to Recruit Personnel from “France,” April 1961

In mid-April 1961, while the agency’s senior leadership was obsessed with toppling Castro at the Bay of Pigs, Harvey and Silver sent QJWIN on a recruiting spree to hire petty criminals from France. Why would this team, so intent on ousting Castro, have simultaneously initiated such a vague effort over in Europe? And if Harvey really was planning a standby assassination capability, as he told the Church Committee, why burden a long-standing American ally, France, by recruiting criminals there for the CIA’s darkest operation?

If Cobb was QJWIN, then these recruitments weren’t in “France”—they were in the United States. And they were interdependent with the Bay of Pigs failure, and the ensuing rage at Kennedy that followed. Let’s remember that two of Silver’s main objectives for ZRRIFLE were that some recruiting would take place from within the CIA and that “agents will be spotted in several areas, including the United States.”

After meeting with Silver in Germany at the end of March, QJWIN supposedly packed a bag and spent April hopscotching across France. Meanwhile, Silver also traveled across Europe and reportedly met with QJWIN several times to monitor the progress. Silver’s presence in Europe, as proven by cables and flight manifests, would argue that QJWIN was there. But every time QJWIN was handed expense money during the “French” mission, it was doled out in round figures in American dollars, not in the usual Belgian francs.

Handing dollars to a CIA agent in Europe would seem an unthinkable breach of tradecraft. But on April 14, when QJWIN was being given dollars in Europe, June Cobb was meeting with “William Barnes,” the Nixon supporter who was financing her assignments in the United States. Afterward Cobb parked herself in a D.C. hotel room for the Bay of Pigs calamity. Sure enough, in the wake of that disaster, Cobb expressed fury to Jean Pierson. “Cobb was so upset about the invasion, she was ready to go to Murray KEMPTON [a radio host] and ‘tell all,’ ” Pierson reported. Meanwhile, Catherine Taaffe sent an anguished letter to Robert Kennedy.

If this program was using circuitous communications, as I have proposed, then Silver was in Europe but, like Luxembourg, had a phone line running to Cobb in America. Silver then cabled Harvey the names of people he was sending QJWIN to recruit, using open-coded biographies that Harvey would quickly recognize. With this tactic in mind, let’s take a stab at decoding the “French” recruits whom Silver was sending QJWIN to see.

Decoding QJWIN’s Recruits from “France”

To decode these “French” recruits, I used the same techniques I’d developed for deciphering Cobb’s cryptic memos. I looked for matches between Cobb and QJWIN’s associates that exhibited the trifecta of (1) astonishing similarities, (2) timeline synchronicities, and (3) open-coded sound-alike indicators.

It immediately became apparent that QJWIN’s first recruit from “France,” a criminal spotter named Jacques Santelli, matched up with Harvey’s best criminal spotter, Johnny Roselli. Both worked on the CIA’s assassination plots, both were on board with ZRRIFLE, both were the agency’s conduits to more criminals, and both worked in ZRRIFLE at the exact same time. The sound-alike indicator is obvious, and once you see this identification, you can never unsee it.

Likewise, if you accept QJWIN as Cobb, then Silver’s second recruit for QJWIN, Jean Rolland, would immediately bring to mind June’s case officer, Jean Pierson. Silver described Rolland as being “in the French Underground with QJWIN” and they “have seen each other often.” Working together in an underground and seeing each other often would be a nice confirmation that you are talking about a case officer. And if Harvey’s team was recruiting a rogue group from within the CIA, QJWIN’s other case officers would be of primary interest.

Silver’s third recruit, Joseph Legoux, whose “contact QJWIN same as [Jean Rolland] above,” would then be Cobb’s male case officer. I have yet to nail down who Cobb’s male case officer was, but Dave Phillips is a leading contender. Silver’s final recruit from “France,” Rolland Gaillard, he described as a “Taxi Driver past 5-6 years,” immediately bringing to mind Rafael Gesto from Cobb’s taxi crew who helped with her delivery to Orta.

So how did QJWIN’s “French” recruiting spree go? Santelli and Gaillard evidently said yes, since both helped QJWIN find criminals for ZRRIFLE. Rolland and Legoux were never mentioned again, but Phillips followed June to her new assignment in Mexico City, where he was stationed for most of ZRRIFLE. I’ve found no evidence that Jean Pierson worked with Cobb during ZRRIFLE’s final year and a half.

Those are the four recruits QJWIN was instructed to approach in the spring of 1961. But there was one more interesting candidate that Silver considered sending QJWIN to see before Harvey eliminated him from the program.

9.7 PERSONAL ACTION

In Silver’s cable listing the French recruits, he also suggested that QJWIN visit Carl Grossman and François Delidaise, two candidates residing in “Madrid,” and not in “France.” But that wasn’t the only qualification that set these two apart.

Deep within his handwritten notes, Silver described Grossman as the “best PA prospect, if he can be trusted.” While “PA” can have several meanings, as Harvey and Silver’s search for a candidate to fill this role progresses, we will learn that it means “personal action,” or the direct act of killing the target. Grossman was under consideration to commit the murder. Delidaise was someone associated with Grossman.

Decoding Carl Grossman

In 1961 one of the most talented men alive for a covert strike force was the World War II German commando Otto Skorzeny. His most famous exploit was the daring rescue of Benito Mussolini, the deposed Italian dictator who had been captured and was being held in custody in Gran Sasso. In September 1943 Skorzeny landed a glider squadron atop a mountain and freed Mussolini in dramatic fashion.

Silver knew Skorzeny, having interrogated him at Camp King near Frankfurt after the war, where the United States was eager to put talent like him into a “denazification” program, to clear him for future use. Skorzeny escaped that camp and eventually made himself available to international intelligence services, basing his new life in Madrid. His wife Ilse opened a shop in New York City, where she brokered his intelligence deals.

The Madrid location and the German surname alone would be enough to tip off Harvey that Carl Grossman was a code for Otto Skorzeny. Harvey immediately forwarded a litany of problematic international connections that Grossman might have had, while concurring that Silver’s other leads were more promising. Delidaise also had murky ties and was in the same circle as Grossman, making Delidaise the possible code for Skorzeny’s wife, Ilse.

But by nixing Skorzeny, Harvey left a hole in the project’s PA position. That prompted Silver to cable back with a new idea.

He [QJWIN] willing to play role for us in jobs for which we are now searching for candidates. Would make good PA. Reasons well, is secure, has guts, cool head.

QJWIN had volunteered to take on the PA or personal action position, and Arnold Silver liked the idea—a lot. Harvey halted this discussion over the wires, saying they would resume when Silver got back to headquarters.

With the “French” recruitments now behind them, ZRRIFLE was about to pivot, and June Cobb was packing her bags for her next foreign deployment.

9.8 TO MEXICO, JUNE 1961

In the summer of 1961, big shifts were in store for ZRRIFLE and, simultaneously, for June Cobb. In late May, with no explanation and no advance warning, Cobb was redeployed to Mexico City. At the same time, Harvey instituted more secure communication protocols for QJWIN’s program, demanding that all cables slugged ZRRIFLE be placed in sealed envelopes and delivered for his eyes only. Meanwhile, QJWIN and Cobb underwent simultaneous adjustments to their pay agreements with the agency. These tectonic shifts were so synchronized, most were implemented on the very same day.

Meanwhile, Lee Harvey Oswald was still trying to arrange his trip to the U.S. embassy in Moscow to discuss his return. Travel inside the Soviet Union was no easy matter, so it took him six months to arrive at the facility’s door. During that lull, he’d taken to mailing lengthy letters to his family in Texas updating them on his efforts, letters that were intercepted and read by the CIA’s Counterintelligence Division.

So in the summer of 1961, just as ZRRIFLE was beginning in earnest, Oswald began communicating with his family about returning to Texas, while June Cobb was relocating to the closest major CIA station, a thousand miles away. This configuration has echoes of Harvey’s original plan for the Congo, which had positioned one agent inside the target zone while the outside agent managed the process from another country. From Mexico City, Cobb could access all the infrastructure of a foreign station, including funding, case officer contacts, and communications via secure systems. She was positioned in Mexico City for ZRRIFLE’s duration, just a four-hour flight from Dallas in Jerrie’s Aero Commander 680.

Jean Pierson Plants Disinformation into Cobb Handoff

June Cobb ostensibly left for Mexico City on May 26, 1961, but Jean Pierson didn’t inform the station that she was coming until two weeks later. That’s probably because Jerrie was at the Paris Air Show from May 28 to June 2, a trip that coincided with Kennedy’s state visit to France. Jerrie booked herself into the same hotel as the president’s entourage, although Kennedy and the first lady stayed in an apartment nearby. Jerrie left Paris the same day as the president, on June 2, 1961.

Then, on June 5 and 6, Pierson drafted two documents sending June off to Mexico City. These documents, wherein Pierson explains to the Mexico City station that Cobb will be living in their region and available for their use, are fascinating because Pierson regurgitates Cobb’s entire biography but laces it with provably false information. In what has to be the biggest whopper, Pierson tells the Mexico desk that Cobb didn’t even know she worked for the CIA. Not only is that laughable, it flies in the face of a prior memo grappling with the fallout from when June told someone she was a CIA agent. Pierson then assures the Mexico City station that Cobb has no secret writing training, when it was Pierson herself who had trained Cobb in secret writing. The gist of the fiction was that Cobb was a clueless newbie with no spying experience. Of course, no mention was made that Cobb had made a delivery to Orta during the plot against Castro.

According to Harvey and Silver’s plan in the Creation Document, QJWIN was supposed to have a false 201 file. Now we have two documents where we can watch Pierson spinning a false narrative in Cobb’s 201 file, with lies that were escalating just as ZRRIFLE was ramping up.

For a clueless newbie, Cobb certainly was given a multitude of ways she could contact headquarters from afar. Pierson made sure Cobb could phone in at any hour of the day or night on her sterile hotline as “June Corwin,” her alter ego with that QJWIN ring to it. A mail drop awaited her reports in Manhattan, write-ups that were securely rerouted from New York to D.C. Cobb could also use the Mexico City station to forward information via pouch or cable, a method that’s particularly confounding when paired with Pierson’s statement that Cobb didn’t know she worked for the agency. June was also greeted by a new male case officer upon her arrival. But nothing to see here, she’s just a beginner!

While Cobb as a bumbling neophyte is the kind of fish story we’ve seen before, this time Pierson threw in a new twist. Previously, even though Cobb was an admirer of Latin American dictators, her deep-down loyalty to Uncle Sam had never been questioned. Suddenly, just as Pierson was handing her off, Cobb’s patriotism begins to curdle.

AMUPAS-1 [Cobb] is an individual who needs a “cause”—who apparently needs something or someone she can crusade for. In the past it has been a paramour, and the Cuban Revolution; at the present time it is assisting her country to combat the spread of Communism; tomorrow it could be Communism itself.

Six months prior, Cobb had penned a policy speech meant for John F. Kennedy calling communism “the deadly enemy of free men.” Three months ago, she had enlisted Juan Orta to betray Fidel Castro. But suddenly she could go communist at any minute. That’s some pivot!

Once again I noticed explanations within the Creation Document. QJWIN needed a false 201 file that would place blame on the Soviets. Now, as ZRRIFLE was gearing up, June’s vulnerability to communism was becoming her performative feature.

For Cobb, being a spy based in Mexico City held yet another advantage. From the United States, orchestrating travel to destinations beyond the iron curtain was problematic. From Mexico, an American could hop a plane to Cuba and from there continue on to the Soviet Union—as Martin and Mitchell’s defection path revealed.

ZRRIFLE’s attention would now turn to the most important recruitment of them all.

9.9 RECRUITING OSWALD, JULY 1961

Recruiting someone into a plot to assassinate the president of the United States would be hard to accomplish without a secure person-to-person conversation. That would likely hold true whether Oswald participated wittingly or was maneuvered unwittingly, as some have suggested. The ZRRIFLE team’s first and best opportunity to meet with Oswald would have been during his trip to Moscow in July 1961. On that trip, Oswald entered the U.S. embassy compound twice, once on July 8 and again two days later. So is there any evidence that a ZRRIFLE team member positioned themselves to recruit him?

A rendezvous between Oswald and a recruiter would require them both to arrive on a prearranged date. We’ve seen how coded letters can elegantly transmit covert information, and Oswald began exchanging letters with his family after he decided to return. But another tactic for signaling an agent from afar was to embed information in a radio broadcast, whether covert or public.

Let’s remember that in April 1961, while QJWIN was recruiting in “France,” Arnold Silver was traveling in Europe on a month-long tour of duty. During that trip, in addition to visiting Luxembourg, he stopped by the Copenhagen, Oslo, and Brussels stations for a project code-named ZRRAGTIME. Silver returned to Europe in August for a second phase of that operation.

From the cables sent during ZRRAGTIME’s second phase, we learn that Silver coordinated his arrival at the Nordic stations with a “KUCLUB” team and their equipment. KUCLUB was the CIA’s Office of Communications, and its teams specialized in setting up mobile radio bases capable of signaling remote agents. The CIA stations that Silver was visiting, Oslo and Copenhagen, were excellent geographic choices from which to signal Oswald in Minsk, where the defector worked at a radio factory with access to parts and receivers.

Oswald flew to Moscow on July 8, 1961, using his vacation from work to cover his absence, then returned to Minsk on July 14.

QJWIN was the agent tasked with ZRRIFLE’s recruitments. So where was QJWIN?

June Cobb’s Mysterious Trip to Cuba, July 1961

June used her sterile phone line and alias “June Corwin” to call Pierson from Mexico City on June 28, 1961. There is no record of what was discussed, but soon afterward June and Jerrie both go missing from my timeline, leaving a gap in their whereabouts from July 6 to July 17. In the middle of that absence, Pierson urgently tried to get a message to June through the Mexico City station. On July 10, the day of Oswald’s final meeting at the Moscow embassy, Pierson cabled Mexico City with the following:

Pls [please] contact AMUPAS ONE [Cobb] and instruct Subj[ect] under NO circumstances make trip to PBRUMEN [Cuba] for celebration.

The important part of that message was telling Cobb not to go to Cuba, a strange warning because there was no indication that Cobb was planning a trip anywhere. Of course, Martin and Mitchell had left Mexico City and traveled to the Soviet Union via Cuba, where, when stamps with Castro’s signature were needed, June Cobb could get it done. Pierson’s urgent order that Mexico City station signal Cobb suggests that June was on a deep mission that had something to do with traveling to Cuba or beyond.

In that same cable, Pierson told the station she would start making regular phone calls to Cobb in Mexico City on July 13, and would call every subsequent day at the same time until Cobb answered. A few days later Pierson must have learned that Cobb wouldn’t be back in Mexico for several more days, so she moved the call series to July 17. Pierson then assured the station that the matter she was discussing with Cobb had nothing to do with operations in Mexico.

After June’s return, we’re left to read the tea leaves, and Pierson’s memo with notes from their call is laden with open code. Pierson’s first question was to ask June if “Benito” had decided to do the “movie” project, an endeavor that scarcely got mentioned before or since. The query about Benito’s participation was answered simply with a check.

The memo then stipulates that Cobb be paid an extra $300, a payment the case officer triggered by cabling Mexico City station on July 27. That’s the equivalent of $3,000 today, a hefty sum that Pierson first explained away as a book advance but later said was for a “hospitalization” that suddenly excused Cobb’s absence. The dangling payment was eventually expensed to William Harvey’s Task Force W, the division handling Cuba.

Now let’s compare Cobb’s mysterious absence to QJWIN’s activities over the same period. QJWIN was contacted on July 6 by Luxembourg and told to be ready for a debriefing in late July, but there was no mention of any trip or assignment. QJWIN’s debriefing wound up being on July 27 or 28, and at that meeting, QJWIN received a $200 payment. In Pierson’s notes about Cobb’s $300 payment, she carefully parsed it into $200 for an “advance” and $100 for “book royalties.” Was Cobb’s $200 portion, triggered by Pierson’s cable on July 27, a match to the $200 allotment given to QJWIN on July 27 or 28?

The synchronous payments between June Cobb and QJWIN did not stop there.

9.10 FOLLOW THE MONEY: QJWIN AND JUNE COBB

Fiscally speaking, QJWIN and June Cobb were joined at the hip. Whenever QJWIN’s salary was adjusted, so was June Cobb’s. Whenever Pierson handed Cobb cash, QJWIN signed for money in Luxembourg. The funding spigot for the two agents was synchronized throughout all three major assassination operations.

Cobb and QJWIN’s files are like little archeological sites, from which we can not only track the timing of their payments but divine the techniques they used to navigate their cloak-and-dagger worlds. The two spies couldn’t have conducted themselves more differently, starting with the fact that only one left us with a comprehensive financial trail.

A Tale of Two Spie$

Reading QJWIN’s file, you get the impression that the station chief in Luxembourg routinely paid the secret agent in the exact same way. Little slips of paper pepper QJWIN’s file, each one typed with the date of the transaction and the amount of money they received. “Jose Mankel” always signed on a signature line to receive his cash, which was usually handed over in a round figure of Belgian francs. The uniformity of the slips and the fact that most were typewritten leads you to conclude that Mankel was paid while he was visiting a secure space with a typewriter, presumably at an office.

Most times QJWIN was picking up a monthly salary, but sometimes they were asking to be reimbursed for a recruiting trip. In order to justify those expenses, they dutifully brought back receipts, which can be found in their file, complete with the hotel’s logo, address, and dates of their stay. Like a pencil pusher in a middle-management job, the assassin-recruiter accounted for every little thing: every train they boarded, every meal they enjoyed, every long-distance phone call billed to their hotel. This paper trail would seem to lay down irrefutable evidence that QJWIN was constantly in Europe from 1961 to 1963.

FIGURE 9E. Jose Mankel pay slips from QJWIN’s file.

Meanwhile, June Cobb got her money like a real spy. She never signed for her cash, which was often handed to her in the privacy of a hotel room. Pierson was the woman keeping her flush, and when she wasn’t handing Cobb money, she was sending it via Western Union or cabling the nearest CIA station for covert delivery.

Cobb was following to a tee the strict protocols that Harvey had laid out for QJWIN. The secret agent was simply to give a broad accounting for their travel and hotels and was never to keep a detailed accounting, lest it breach their security by revealing their movements. The reason we know Pierson gave Cobb her payments is that the case officer left a trail in her notes while organizing the logistics. Cobb was careful to leave no such trail.

Meanwhile, the problems with Mankel sidling up to a typewriter to get paid while dropping off receipts are plentiful. Obviously, signing and dating your whereabouts isn’t good spycraft, least of all for the operative who’s supposed to be at the heart of the CIA’s secret assassination program. But provable inconsistencies put the lie to QJWIN’s file. In one document, Luxembourg assured headquarters that Mankel didn’t even know the station chief worked at the embassy. Another says QJWIN always called in for instructions on an outside line. If the Luxembourg chief never made face-to-face contact with the agent, that makes these signed, typewritten slips extremely problematic.

Worse yet, Mankel signed for money on several days when QJWIN’s file says they were away on assignments. Specifically, QJWIN was in Paris getting inoculations and contacting criminals when they signed for their November 6, 1960, payment. They were away spotting criminals when they signed on August 1, 1961. And throughout 1963, they were living full time in Baden-Baden, Germany, while still signing the same slips for Belgian francs, the Luxembourg currency, just as they had when living in Luxembourg.

The illusion that QJWIN was in Luxembourg can be further unspooled by comparing QJWIN’s slips to payments given to June Cobb.

Cobb and QJWIN Salary Comparison

FIGURE 9F. QJWIN–June Cobb salary comparison.

Figure 9F illustrates how QJWIN’s and Cobb’s salaries started and stopped in unison and in accordance with the shifts in QJWIN’s three major assassination operations.

During the Congo operation, both Cobb and QJWIN were paid a regular salary, and their salaries both ended on January 1, 1961. Then both agents entered into a gap period, when neither received a monthly salary, and both were paid in spot payments. Suddenly they resumed their monthly salaries in unison, and both were retroactively paid their May salary. That happened the same week ZRRIFLE was officially activated, and June Cobb moved to Mexico City.

While the timing of their salary payments was perfectly synchronized, the amounts they were paid were not. QJWIN’s $1,000-a-month salary was a living wage, while June’s poverty pay of $100 a month put her in dire financial straits. But we could be looking at a salary that was split between two identities of the same agent, with QJWIN’s salary being the real McCoy, while June’s was window dressing to make her appear to be a separate person.

If true as written, Cobb’s poverty pay would have created a massive security breach. Enemy intelligence agencies were notorious for exploiting financial need. But incredibly, during the first four months of 1961, when June was approaching Juan Orta and orchestrating the CIA’s delivery to him, the CIA cut her salary completely! Let that sink in. June Cobb managed a delivery to Orta and facilitated his defection while he was mobilized to kill Fidel Castro, but according to her file, she did so as a volunteer with no visible means of support and no compensation for taking on that risk.

Jean Pierson was aware that she had an optics problem with Cobb’s salary, so she drafted a memo on March 18, 1961, pondering how to manage it. In a fascinating reveal, she tipped her hand that she knew Cobb would soon resume a salary, and she was already looped in on who she would be receiving it from.

We [the CIA] were attempting to arrive at a fair arrangement for paying her—that in the interim we would pay all expenses involved in her travel and activities performed at our direction—in addition we give her occasional spot payments for information received. A monthly retainer was discussed with [redacted]—approximately $50 dollars a month—since she has no constant source of income. However, since she will be on a salary with BARNES, it would appear advisable to hold this amount against her future needs.

Notice that Pierson didn’t feel obliged to pay Cobb any CIA salary if she was getting one from Barnes. But more important, just as ZRRIFLE was ramping up, Cobb started drawing her salary from William Barnes, the Nixon supporter she previously met with about the incident with the potential to swing the election.

The final clue in Cobb’s salary saga is a document that says she didn’t receive a Social Security number until August 1963, and that her Social Security number was arranged through the CIA’s Office of Security. Since a person can be issued only one Social Security number in a lifetime, this looks like a belated effort to legitimize her existence as June Cobb. Let’s remember that in fiscal years 1960 and ’61, June had been paying her income tax under a complex series of covert tax forms and pseudonyms intended to shield her identity and income.

Spot Payments: QJWIN and June Cobb

A spot payment is money given to an agent to cover operational expenses incurred on an assignment, usually for travel, meals, or hotels. Figure 9G illuminates the astonishing fact that every time Pierson gave Cobb a spot payment, it can be correlated to a cash payment that QJWIN signed for within days.

Sometimes the amounts paid to Cobb and QJWIN were identical. Other times QJWIN recorded a larger amount than was registered for Cobb. But every cent given to Cobb can be accounted for on QJWIN’s ledger, and whenever June received her money, so did QJWIN, usually within forty-eight hours.

Since Cobb was supposed to be a low-level agent, her eye-popping expenses required explanation. Three hundred dollars in the early 1960s equals almost $3,000 today, and Cobb was dished modern-day thousands on the regular. Pierson’s notes often included unusual explanations for the windfalls—things like book royalties, business trips, agency-sponsored parties, and even a loan from the case officer to cover a hospitalization.

FIGURE 9G. QJWIN–June Cobb spot pay comparison.

While not all the spot payments match exactly in both timing and amount, several do. For example, on March 21, 1961, QJWIN, according to a slip in their file, received the equivalent of $100 in Belgian francs. That matches Cobb’s payment on March 20, 1961, where Pierson wired $100 to her in New York City. QJWIN’s payment was an advance for travel to meet Silver for a debriefing. Cobb’s payment was also an advance, so she could travel from New York City to Washington to be debriefed by her handlers, making this payment a match in both amount and purpose.

“Jeri” Signs a Routing Slip Concerning QJWIN’s Payments, December 1963

The final clue in QJWIN and Cobb’s payment saga landed in QJWIN’s file on December 6, 1963, when, just as project ZRRIFLE was winding down, the woman named “Jeri” once again signed QJWIN’s paperwork. This time Jeri was making sure that QJWIN’s salary information, which arrived with a dispatch from Luxembourg, was rerouted to the Finance Division at headquarters. To that end, Jeri signed this routing slip attached to QJWIN’s financial report:

FIGURE 9H. Routing slip signed by “Jeri” on December 6, 1963, during ZRRIFLE.

The female CIA agent named Jeri had now handled QJWIN’s materials a total of three times, once in each of QJWIN’s three main operational phases. Here is Jerrie Cobb’s signature compared to that of the “Jeri” who forwarded QJWIN’s financial paperwork:

FIGURE 9I. Left: Signature of “Jeri” on QJWIN’s salary routing slip. Right: Jerrie Cobb’s signature.

QJWIN’s salary was terminated at the end of ZRRIFLE in April of 1964. June Cobb remained on board with the CIA, in some capacity, until at least the spring of 1968.

9.11 RECRUITING CRIMINALS, 1961

Criminals were always part of the plan, but there never seemed to be any urgency surrounding their recruitment. QJWIN and Silver started to discuss them only after the shopping spree in “France” was finished. When QJWIN did finally visit two crooks, it took Silver eight months to analyze the results.

Comments like “can probably be used if needed” and “no action has been taken on these names regarding tracing or anything else” suggest that the potential recruits were auditioning for supporting roles and not as leading men. When Silver finally narrowed the list to the ones who could be used “if needed,” you can almost hear him yawn.

QJWIN’s prior modus operandi had been to set up a deceptive front through which they could hire criminals without them understanding for whom they were working. With that strategy in mind, let’s meet the three criminal finalists who were considered for ZRRIFLE. We will start with the one who was not like the others.

ZRRIFLE’s First Recruit: Aldo Barletta, February 1961

During QJWIN and Cobb’s twin trips during the Orta mission in February 1961, QJWIN got a lead to a criminal who was later considered for use in ZRRIFLE. This recruit was a cat burglar named Aldo Barletta, an Italian safecracker and lock-picker who worked with an assistant. June Cobb was in the Caribbean at the time, and knowing that agency communications were commonly written in open code, I wondered if Barletta might match up to a criminal from the Castro assassination saga.

Enter Arthur Balletti, a wiretapper who was employed by Johnny Roselli and the CIA during the Orta mission time frame. QJWIN’s Barletta was a lock-picker who owned his own tools and worked with an assistant. That matches Balletti, who had been arrested on a wiretapping job where he’d brought along “seventeen professional type lock picks” while working with an assistant.

While the sound-alike indicator is obvious and the synchronicities are tantalizing, it’s unclear if Barletta’s services were ever used for ZRRIFLE. Much more effort and consideration went into QJWIN’s second set of criminal prospects.

QJWIN Scouts Two Criminals, October and November 1961

There were only two petty hoodlums who got serious consideration in ZRRIFLE, and both were culled from recommendations that QJWIN received from middlemen—“Santelli,” “Gaillard,” and “Hugh”—during the spring recruiting session. When Arnold Silver finally got around to evaluating the prospects, he sent QJWIN out to interview the top two.

QJWIN didn’t line up these meetings until the fall of 1961, and when they happened, QJWIN hid behind Santelli as the front man. The plan, as outlined in QJWIN’s report to Luxembourg after the successful mission, was for QJWIN to tag along and observe while Santelli conducted the interviews. This modus operandi exemplifies how America’s assassination program hid behind criminal cutouts to hire thugs who thought they were working for a criminal ring and not for the CIA.

QJWIN was the puppeteer crafting the deception and, like any good director, scouted the location in advance. Santelli then invited the prospects, one at a time, to join him for an overnight stay at the hotel, along with QJWIN. “Santelli enquired into their professional competence, told them to be patient,” while introducing QJWIN merely as an associate, Luxembourg explained. Afterward QJWIN phoned the results in to Luxembourg, who sent a dispatch to headquarters with QJWIN’s thoughts on each crook.

It struck me that if QJWIN were a woman, this deception would have been all the more elegant. QJWIN could simply pose as a girlfriend who was meeting Santelli for the overnight stay; she could pretend to be clueless arm candy while Santelli stepped through the series of questions. Johnny Roselli, whom I’ve pegged as Santelli, was a dashing silver-haired mobster, often seen in the company of attractive women. With this tactic in mind, let’s review QJWIN’s report about each criminal encounter.

Criminal Prospect 1, Henri Gartoni, October 18, 1961

On October 18, 1961, Santelli and Henri Gartoni arrived at the hotel that QJWIN pre-selected. Gartoni registered at the front desk while being watched closely by QJWIN, who scrutinized his identification. QJWIN then quizzed the porter for more information about Gartoni. Once the men sat down to discuss business, Santelli probed Gartoni about his professional skill, and QJWIN came away confident that Gartoni was fooled about the true purpose of the meeting. The group stayed only one night, and the mission was over.

In the end, QJWIN felt Gartoni was too “flamboyant” for the program. Back in Luxembourg, a dated receipt was tucked into QJWIN’s file, complete with a hotel logo and address for an establishment in Basel, Switzerland.

On that same night, October 18, 1961, Johnny Roselli also checked into a hotel for an overnight stay. The FBI was keeping close tabs on Roselli and knew he’d flown into Los Angeles that day with his good friend Maurice Friedman. An FBI source observed the two men checking into the hotel and specifically noted that it was Friedman who registered for the rooms. The duo stayed one night at the Beverly Crest in Los Angeles and left the next day.

Friedman, like Roselli, was connected to the mob. He owned the Frontier Casino in Vegas, partied with Sinatra, and wore flashy suits—all of which could qualify him as “flamboyant.” The cursory FBI report didn’t mention who the men mingled with at the hotel or any women they encountered.

Criminal Prospect 2, Gilbert Pion, November 15, 1961

On November 15, 1961, Santelli and QJWIN repeated the mission with the second prospect, using the same hotel and same modus operandi. Another receipt from the Swiss hotel was logged in Luxembourg, with the costs for the mission. But on the night of this meeting, there were no FBI records of Roselli’s activities—and that’s a shame because Gilbert Pion was QJWIN’s favorite. Pion was eventually put on hold for use in ZRRIFLE.

QJWIN came away declaring they “would use him” and strongly recommended Pion over the first candidate. Pion was willing to use a gun, according to Silver’s final assessment. He was described as a stocky man in his mid-forties with thinning hair and good nerves. According to QJWIN, Pion “lived in an inn whose principal clientele were truck drivers on long hauls,” and the inn was the location where Pion could be contacted.

In the events surrounding Kennedy’s assassination, only one major player fits the description of a petty criminal, and that would be Jack Ruby. If ZRRIFLE used Ruby to eliminate Oswald, then it appears to have mobilized him on an “if needed” basis.

Jack Ruby’s strip club, the Carousel, catered to a similar clientele, and Ruby ran his business out of that establishment, where he, too, could be contacted. Ruby, like Pion, was a stout, middle-aged, balding man who was willing to use a gun. In France, his home country, Pion’s surname means “pawn.”

By mid-November 1961, the recruiting phase for ZRRIFLE was finished. The first wave of “French” candidates had long ago been recruited, and the second wave of criminals was on hold, awaiting word.

QJWIN could now focus their efforts on ZRRIFLE’s most extensive operational task: the multiple-year process of building their own cover.

9.12 JUDY CAMPBELL

If Jerrie Cobb knew Jack Kennedy, and June sent a package to Juan Orta during a CIA operation that also included mobsters, the question must be asked: If they dealt with her directly, under what circumstances did the president and criminals know her? In the intersection between President Kennedy, the agency’s in-house mobster Johnny Roselli, and the pill courier Sam Giancana, there was only one woman who was in contact with all three—the blond, beautiful, and seductive mistress to men of ZRRIFLE, Judy Campbell.

I’ll admit that I first looked into Campbell because of her shared initials with June and Jerrie Cobb. If the mistake the CIA made with aliases was a rudimentary one, a researcher shouldn’t ignore it because it’s too simplistic. I was also looking for a female handler who might have been meeting with Roselli, so I scoured the FBI reports searching for his repeated contacts with a blond woman. And the one beautiful blond who was in constant contact with Roselli during the time frame in question was the presidential mistress and ZRRIFLE groupie Judy Campbell.

Judy Campbell and Jack Kennedy

Campbell’s affair with Kennedy began immediately after he emerged as the leading Democratic contender for the presidency in early 1960. Their relationship consisted of a series of trysts punctuated by long absences, which gave her time to be elsewhere, and elsewhere she was.

Campbell, supposedly, began dating mobster Sam Giancana simultaneously with her Kennedy affair, but I have found no FBI surveillance confirming she was ever seen with Giancana—they usually communicated by phone. She was, however, spotted with Johnny Roselli, with whom she was in much more frequent contact and in closer proximity.

We know about the Campbell-Kennedy affair only because Judy told us about it herself. In her 1977 memoir, Judith Exner: My Story, the divorcee, who penned the book under her married name, laid out the entire romance, complete with dates and details of each sexual encounter with “Jack” and pictures of her tickets to his political events, including the inauguration. In Campbell’s telling, she regularly left Jack’s bed and ran straight to Giancana, but when Kennedy became president, the affair cooled due to his responsibilities. Still, she occasionally visited the White House for trysts, and during the first year of his presidency, Kennedy happily took her calls.

By her own admission, Campbell had a way of dropping off the map for long stretches of time, while she was holed up painting or became ill. For example, a long illness in May 1960 took her out of action, during the same period when Jerrie was away delivering an Aero Commander to Africa. Her memoir also reports that she was depressed, drinking heavily, and skipping her meetings with Kennedy in late August 1960, during the period of Jerrie’s astronaut PR rollout—a detail I discovered when I plotted her whereabouts onto the June-Jerrie timeline.

Once Kennedy became president, Campbell’s self-reported contacts with Kennedy can be corroborated by gate logs and phone records at the White House, and they match her memoir perfectly. In the early days of Kennedy’s term, Campbell first popped onto the FBI’s radar due to her phone contacts with Giancana, followed by the revelation that she was also in contact with Roselli. But what the bureau hadn’t yet discovered was that the beautiful blond was also in direct contact with the president.

Wait a minute. I keep typing blond, but wasn’t Judy Campbell a raven-haired beauty? And didn’t her autobiography feature numerous photos, taken during the Kennedy years, in which she always had black hair? The book contains photos of Judy at all stages of her life, and no matter her age, her hair was jet-black and gorgeous. She even did a series of TV interviews promoting the book, and sure enough, Campbell was a lifelong raven-haired beauty.

FIGURE 9J. Photos of Judy Campbell published in her autobiography, Judith Exner: My Story (dates added based on her captions).

But curiously, the Judy Campbell the FBI was tracking in the Kennedy years was a beautiful blond. Every time Campbell was described in their files prior to March 1962, she was always said to be an attractive blond woman, and never had dark hair. FBI agents surveilled her, interviewed her in person, spoke to sources who knew her, and developed reams of reports. The description of her as having black hair appeared only after the White House was notified that Campbell was connected to the president as well as to the mob.

It stretches credulity, for example, to think that Special Agent Clayton Taylor, after interviewing Campbell on November 27, 1961, would be confused about whether he had seen an attractive blond or a raven-haired beauty. Taylor met with Campbell at a Palm Springs mansion on 386 Racquet Club Road, at which time he described her as follows:

CAMPBELL furnished her name as Miss JUDITH CAMPBELL. SA TAYLOR observed this residence was a large home with servants quarters and he observed that CAMPBELL appeared to be about 25 to 30 years of age having blonde hair and to be a very attractive woman.

In that same report, Taylor’s description of Campbell was seconded by FBI source “T-81,” who managed the Los Angeles apartment complex where Campbell had been renting for the previous year and a half.

On January 24, 1962, LA T-81 advised that JUDITH CAMPBELL is a very good looking blonde girl in her late 20s or early 30s; that she is a free lance artist who formerly worked for Jerry Lewis Productions, and that she wears very nice clothes and furs of which she appears to have a good supply.

In yet another instance, when FBI agents were surveilling the movements of Johnny Roselli, they spotted him getting into a T-Bird with a blond female companion. Since Campbell was a blond and they were getting into her car, it would seem the agents had just witnessed a meeting between Roselli and Campbell.

On January 11, 1962, ROSSELLI [sic] and JOSEPH I. BREEN JR. were observed leaving Romanoff’s Restaurant in Beverly Hills with a blonde woman. This woman and Rosselli entered the Ford Thunderbird bearing California license VPC 488, which is registered to JUDITH E. CAMPBELL, 1200 South Flores, Los Angeles, California.

So the woman meeting with mobsters was the blond Judy Campbell. But what about the woman who was in contact with Kennedy during this time? What color hair did she have? Luckily, the FBI files answer that question. When Special Agent Taylor interviewed Campbell in late November 1961, she was staying at 386 Racquet Club Road in Palm Springs, and he documented that the woman who lived there was the blond Judy Campbell. As a part of the same investigation, Taylor looked up the phone number at the residence where Campbell was staying, and her number was 324-3879.

FIGURE 9K. Blond Judy Campbell’s address and phone number as reported by the FBI in November 1961.

Click here to view as text.

I visited the Kennedy Library and collected the presidential phone logs recorded by Kennedy’s secretary, Evelyn Lincoln. On November 10, 1961, Judy Campbell called the president and left her return number, which was 324-3879 in Palm Springs. The woman phoning President Kennedy was the blond Judy Campbell.

Judy Campbell Gets Dark Hair, March 1962

In late February 1962, the FBI learned that the woman whose phone calls they were tracing because she was in contact with mobsters was also telephoning the White House, and that Kennedy was taking her calls. Robert Kennedy was the first to be notified, after which JFK was informed. Simultaneously, the FBI dispatched a surveillance team, and the bureau took this photo of Judy Campbell on the streets of Los Angeles.

FIGURE 9L. Judy Campbell’s address and phone number from the White House phone log, November 1961.

This photograph was taken on March 20, 1962, and from that point forward, Judy Campbell was a raven-haired beauty. That same month Campbell moved to another apartment, but not before the FBI got one last report from “T-81,” who now described Campbell quite differently than he’d described her before.

FIGURE 9M. FBI surveillance photo of dark-haired Judy Campbell, March 1962.

On March 14th, 1962, LA T-81 advised that recently JUDY CAMPBELL informed him that she was considering moving to a new, larger apartment….

This informant stated that Campbell is a beautiful girl with very dark hair, a round face and smooth complexion; that she reportedly paints children’s pictures and recently had an exhibition at Sloan’s Furniture Store in Beverly Hills.

So did the FBI ever try to reconcile these wildly differing descriptions of the woman who was now central to its investigation of the mob and its protection of the president? No. On February 27, 1962, J. Edgar Hoover sent a memo on the matter to Robert Kennedy and then had lunch with the president on March 22, 1962, two days after his agents photographed dark-haired Judy Campbell. But the FBI’s paperwork ignored the glaring conflict, leaving an observer to come to the most likely explanation: that the FBI willingly participated in the erasure of blond Judy Campbell.

In the twelve years I knew her, Jerrie spoke to me about her acquaintanceship with “Jack” only once, but we know June approached Kennedy’s campaign team while reporting back to her case officer. June also managed a delivery to Orta during the operation where the CIA claimed it was using mobsters. This entire book has tracked the movements of a shape-shifting female spy who used aliases with the initials JC—and now we learn that Judy Campbell, who was in contact with Roselli, Giancana, and Kennedy simultaneously, received a new physical description in the FBI’s files in the middle of ZRRIFLE. Campbell even admitted on page 143 of her memoir that she used aliases during her affair with Giancana.

My timelining analysis should have ruled out Jerrie and June from being Campbell quickly, but it was inconclusive, displaying the same types of absences and synchronicities that I’d encountered before. While definitively proving who blond Judy Campbell was is beyond the scope of this book, the conflicting FBI records suggest that a ruse was in play with Campbell’s identity.

A raven-haired Campbell suddenly appeared in the FBI’s files, while the blond who had known Kennedy disappeared into thin air.

9.13 JUNE COBB’S COVER, 1961 AND 1962

Over the course of working on this project, I’d learned that intelligence cover is the art of reshaping reality, and that an operation or agent is only as good as their cover. That explains why QJWIN’s dominant task during ZRRIFLE was building that cover. Spotting criminals and others was done within months. Making reality bend to their will took the star agent three years.

June Cobb’s cover buildout was such a long and complicated process, I found it helpful to break it into a series of tasks. Her first order of business was also the most pressing. June Cobb’s face would be making its national debut.

The Dust Jacket, June–October 1961

June had barely unpacked her suitcase in Mexico City when she began receiving mail from her covert allies in the United States. Her most ardent pen pal was Richard Gibson, the head of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New York, a radical pro-Castro group that Oswald would soon try to join. Gibson was helping Cobb manage the coordination of a dust jacket for the book The Shark and the Sardines, a cover that would feature a photo of June that does not look like Jerrie. Translators are rarely pictured on book jackets, a circumstance made all the more unusual by the omission of June’s co-translator, Raul Osequeda. This book was the last one Oswald took out of the library before shooting at Kennedy, and is the first in a long series of connections between Cobb, Gibson, and Oswald.

Gibson addressed his letters to Cobb in Mexico City as “Clarinda Sharp,” using one of her aliases, placing him in the inner sanctum among those who knew she hid behind alter identities. Much like Rafael Gesto’s, Gibson’s letters struck me as using open code, and were saved to Cobb’s CIA file. Further cementing him within Cobb’s deepest team are the passages where he reports on his contacts with “Sam Freedman” and “Rose Siminow,” links in the chain of her delivery to Orta.

While Gibson was mainly helping Cobb coordinate aspects of the Shark book jacket, he was also deferential to her while attempting to hire her sidekick, Diane Alexandria, or another woman of Cobb’s choosing, as his secretary at Fair Play for Cuba. Since Oswald began writing to Fair Play’s New York office upon his return to the United States in 1962, this potentially puts a Cobb ally in the position of opening letters from Oswald. Alexandria told Gibson during the hiring process that she wasn’t sure she wanted the job because she was frightened of “the possibility of facing congressional witch hunters.” She also didn’t want to “scandalize her family,” a concern that hadn’t stopped her prior engagement to Fidel Castro’s bodyguard.

Gibson’s assignments were of keen interest during Cobb’s sterile phone calls to headquarters. When June returned from her mysterious trip that coincided with Oswald’s visit to Moscow, Pierson first asked her if “Benito” had agreed to do the movie. Her second question was if Gibson and Diane had agreed to “help with the script.”

By late summer of 1961, Gibson’s work with Cobb was so pressing that he planned a visit to Mexico City to see her in person. But suddenly “John Lewine” enters the saga, another New York–based socialist, and he made the trip to see June instead. While there was a real person matching Lewine’s biographical write-up in the Cobb file, I suspect “Lewine” was an alias that Gibson assumed. “Lewine’s” letters sound like Gibson, his signature looks like Gibson’s, and he took over Gibson’s job reporting to Cobb about the dust jacket. But whether he was a middleman or an alias in some ways doesn’t matter, because “Lewine” admitted he was working with Gibson. By October 1, the dust jacket was finished, and “Lewine” informed Cobb:

I shall try to procure some dust jackets for you, and suggest that he [the publisher] mail you a copy—after all you did contribute something to the book’s appearance, didn’t you?

The question about whether Cobb participated in the book’s appearance struck me as an odd joke, given all I’d learned of Jerrie and June’s duality. On October 12, “Lewine” wrote to Cobb again after he picked up the finished jackets:

Two of the people in the [publisher’s] office asked after you, and I was pleased to be able to tell them that you look as lovely as ever and are actively advancing the right causes in Latin America.

It occurred to me, since I’d interviewed Fortuna Calvo-Roth, who identified the June Cobb she knew as Jerrie, that “Lewine” might have been asked by people working on the book why June didn’t look right on the cover; and after saying she looked “as lovely as ever,” his excuse was that she worked for the “right causes in Latin America.” Could this be the excuse that was used when photos of June looked like somebody else? June was widely suspected of being a spy anyway. Wink-wink, she’s working for us.

June Goes Communist, November 1961–March 1962

Not long after the dust jackets were completed, Cobb wound up in an oddly high-profile fracas where she created a scene at an airport while entering Guatemala with a bag full of communist literature. When her materials were confiscated, she pitched a fit—and was summarily tossed from the country. A reporter somehow got wind of the mess, and a syndicated story about June’s expulsion ran in dozens of American papers on November 10, 1961. Pierson’s prediction of Cobb’s communist turn was rapidly becoming Cobb’s new reality.

Meanwhile, back in New York City, a stink had enveloped The Shark and the Sardines, and once again it swirled around Cobb. The New York Times ran a letter from a reader complaining about the book and about June’s role as its translator, calling out her recent arrest with Red propaganda. In response, Cobb sent her own letter barrage to media outlets, emphasizing her prior affection for Castro, doing little to rehabilitate her reputation. Soon Congress got wind of the dust she was kicking up and asked her to explain herself before the Committee on Internal Security.

June’s Testimony to Congress, March 30, 1962

The Senate located Cobb by going through the agency, and it deferred to the CIA on the topics to be discussed. Clearly, the agency could have quashed this proceeding, but June personally said she wanted to testify. This show would be stage-managed by Pierson and monitored by Harvey, to whom Pierson was reporting on every detail.

Seventy-two hours before June appeared, Jerrie Cobb visited a different congressional hearing room to watch a different proceeding.

“The lady was ushered into the hearing room in great secrecy” was the press’s description of June’s covert arrival. The reporters characterized her as a “secret blond witness,” even though I have yet to find a picture where June Cobb looks like a blond.

There were limits on what could be discussed, and testimony was halted when it veered too close to her secrets. For example, when the Senate’s legal counsel asked June “You were helpful to one of the services of the U.S. Government during the latter part of the Batista regime on a certain matter, were you not?,” June answered yes, but asked to go off the record. Her helpfulness to the United States during Batista’s regime would have preceded her CIA recruitment by two years.

Throughout her appearance before Congress, Cobb concealed the fact that she was a CIA agent, and therefore she proceeded to lay down lie after lie. Her sworn testimony, etched in stone for posterity, was that she was a true-blue believer in Latin revolutions and communist causes, something that would come as a surprise to anyone who’d read the words she wrote for Kennedy eighteen months prior. The resulting transcript remained classified until she left her Mexican post in 1966, at which time June authorized its release to the public.

The first four pages were read into the record from information typed up by Pierson two days before. Cobb didn’t even have to remember her own biography. But why would the senators need to know the name of Cobb’s elementary school? Her junior high school? Her siblings’ full names? Where her forebears homesteaded in the 1830s? Odd jobs she took for a few weeks in the late 1940s? Her parents’ street address? The deadly minutiae dragged on and on until even the sprightliest senator must have fallen asleep in his chair.

For anyone still awake, Cobb launched into her bogus history as a true believer in Castro, making no mention that she was a double agent after his scalp. She then waxed poetic on her admiration for The Shark and the Sardines while omitting that she was reporting to the CIA about the book’s author. The resulting transcript spun a false version of her entire life story, stamped with a congressional seal. It’s still the first thing a researcher will discover when they look into June Cobb.

June Writes and Submits the Parade Article, Summer 1962

The second thing about June Cobb that a researcher will find is a photo that she orchestrated on the heels of that testimony. Jack Anderson, a columnist and renowned investigative journalist, had asked her to write a feature article for Parade magazine. Here is how Pierson characterized the agreement between Cobb and Anderson:

Anderson was interested in persuading Subject [Cobb] to write an article for Parade, Washington Post Sunday supplement, based on her personal experience. He [Anderson] had a photographer take pictures to be used if she submitted such an article. The undersigned [Pierson] advised [Cobb] that if she did in fact prepare such an article, we would want to review it before she submitted it.

In the Cold War era, the CIA had a propaganda operation titled Operation Mockingbird, and this incident is exhibit A on how that operation worked. A well-respected investigative journalist was used, either wittingly or unwittingly, to publish an article submitted to him by a CIA agent and preapproved by her handlers. June wrote the piece from her post in Mexico City, sent it to headquarters, and mailed the approved manuscript to Anderson. Anderson then regurgitated it in his own voice, retelling much of her version while augmenting it with an interview, then splashing the story across the fold in Parade as “Meet June Cobb: She’s a Soldier of Fortune.” The syndicated insert was delivered to every corner of America.

I’ll leave it to others to determine the nature of Anderson’s links to the agency, but this certainly wasn’t his first brush with intelligence. During World War II, Anderson went on a covert mission to China for the OSS, presumably using his journalistic credential as cover.

So what did Anderson’s readers learn about June in March 1962? Well, in the first paragraph, they learned she was “known to intelligence agents on two continents,” a boast most spies would want to keep to themselves. He then pegged her as an “opium grower in the Amazon,” an “undercover informer,” and a “confidante of Fidel Castro.”

Standing alone, “Meet June Cobb” might read as a curiosity. But if suspicions about June ever arose in the future and her background came under scrutiny, this article would sink her as a communist spy with criminal ties. It would also prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that June Cobb, the spy, was not Jerrie Cobb, the aviator. Or it would have proven that, if we didn’t have the CIA documents showing how much control Cobb and her case officer had over what was submitted for publication.

Around the time June was licking the stamps on her package to Anderson, Oswald was stepping off a ship in New Jersey. It had been over a year and a half since he wrote to the embassy, but now his feet landed back on American soil.

Still, an interesting thing happened during those same eighteen months. While June was taking her hard turn toward communism, Jerrie had done a one-eighty, too. It had been a long, awkward turnaround for the ponytailed blond, but America’s sweetheart was now grinding her ax.

9.14 JERRIE COBB’S COVER, 1961–1962

In August 1960, when Life announced Jerrie’s astronautical feats, she had stood as the lone woman to have tackled NASA’s medical tests. Six months later twelve others had joined her. The additional dozen had Jerrie to thank along with Jackie Cochran who, far from being a nemesis, was funding the tests and promoting the women’s program.

Three days before John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, Jerrie, Jean Pearson, and Jackie Cochran met at an astronautics conference in Dallas. That’s when Cochran dipped into her considerable wallet to finance a new phase of women’s skill testing. Jerrie had already undergone the demanding testing at Pensacola Naval Base and passed with flying colors. Now she invited the other twelve to join her on Jackie Cochran’s dime.

They never made it. In September 1961, the plug was pulled just days before the women’s arrival. Up until that moment, the idea of women astronauts had been gaining momentum. The press coverage, while tinged with midcentury sexism, was also flavored with a giddy optimism and with an acceptance that women would eventually be joining men in space. But the Pensacola cancellation served as a crisp divide in the story of the Mercury 13, and even more so in the arc of Jerrie Cobb. She bounced off this obstacle into a much more confrontational trajectory, and her dream of space evolved from a patient and sane pursuit into an unrealistic fixation overnight.

I so admired her crusade, and I do believe she truly cared about women’s equality. But even when I was interviewing Jerrie for the film, cracks emerged in her story that her life’s dream was to fly to space. She thought talk of NASA and space was boring and constantly interrupted our interviews, saying the rest of her life was much more interesting. One day after she said that for the millionth time, I snapped my pencil down and said, “Okay, fine! Let’s hear these stories that are so much more fascinating than trying to become an astronaut! I’m all ears!” She sat silent for a fifteen-second slice of eternity before I said, “Okay. Now, back to the space story…”

But the real challenge to the integrity of her space dream came when our producing team offered to approach Virgin Atlantic and SpaceX to arrange for her to go on a space flight. During our interviews, she had often claimed that, even at eighty, she would go to space if given the opportunity. But when a privately funded space flight arranged by our film became a real possibility, she flatly refused, in no uncertain terms. All of a sudden a suborbital flight wasn’t high enough for her liking. Meanwhile, Mercury 13 member Wally Funk was on the waiting list for a Virgin Atlantic flight, and she eventually flew to space in 2021 in a Blue Origin spacecraft with Jeff Bezos.

Before the cancellation of the women’s testing in 1962, Jerrie’s demeanor during her space quest could have been described in one word: gracious. But once the program was canceled, her personality shifted dramatically for a one- or two-year period. A more strident Jerrie took the stage, with sharper elbows and a vast array of demands that quickly decoupled from reality. She was no longer asking simply for women to be tested for future inclusion in the program. She was demanding that NASA begin “an all out program immediately,” training two women on simulators so that one, presumably herself, could be launched into space by “this summer.”

Keep in mind, she was demanding this at a time when only a few American men had flown. She would be jumping ahead of the rest in line. Spacesuits would have to be redesigned. Who was she to think that, with just a few months’ training, she could match the Mercury men who’d been studying and practicing around the clock for four years? But that’s exactly what she demanded, in a tone laden with snark and condescension.

John Glenn’s spacesuit was still at the cleaners from his historic flight when Jerrie hit NASA’s director with this demand:

Perhaps I did not make my proposal clear…. The United States should start an intensive effort immediately, to put the First Woman in space.

While Jerrie’s request might seem reasonable today, the idea that NASA would shift gears for a women’s milestone in the middle of a superpower space race was far outside the 1962 mainstream, so much so that even many of the Mercury 13 were opposed to her approach. Undeterred, she continued stuffing the mailboxes of military leaders, politicos, and officials, arguing her case. As the polite no’s kept stacking up, she escalated the onslaught. She retroactively titled her program “Women in Space Earliest” and started floating ideas like sending a man and a woman up in the same capsule, or swapping places with a female chimpanzee. Jerrie also brazenly claimed to the press that she would be “up there soon—this year anyway.”

Jerrie made that prediction in mid-March 1962, less than a month after John Glenn’s historic flight. That meant she was publicly setting the expectation that she could be given the fourth or fifth manned Mercury launch, a space flight for which she’d done zero training, in a program of which she wasn’t even a part.

Jerrie’s standard refrain that flying to space was a cause she would die for looks very different when viewed as a possible intelligence cover. A statement like “Even if I knew I wouldn’t return alive from a mission, I would go” was unlikely to move her any closer to a launchpad but could be quite useful to explain away rash acts. The sad truth is, Jerrie’s unbalanced approach and the backlash it generated contributed greatly to the twenty-year delay in launching an American woman into space. Jerrie ignored this very concern when it was put to her by Mercury 13 member Bea Steadman at the time.

Steadman argued privately to Jerrie in a letter sent during the summer of 1962 that the women should make decisions as a group instead of solely under Jerrie’s leadership. “I feel if we do a poor job of this now, the opportunity for women in this capacity will be jeopardized for years to come.” Bea’s warning turned out to be prophetic. Sally Ride didn’t reach space until 1983.

In an admission that’s hard for me to make because I’d glossed past it during our film—the demands Jerrie made of NASA that appear so virtuous through history’s gauzy lens were at the time seen by many in the press, at NASA, and in the halls of power as unhinged ultimatums that suggested an emerging instability. Ironically, I’d approached Jerrie to tell the story of her fight for equality, only to end up wondering how much her possible intelligence cover story might have set our gender back.

If Jerrie was deliberately trying to create a trail that documented her unraveling, she succeeded in her final confrontation with NASA’s director James Webb in December 1962. After fielding her demands for months, Webb finally warned her that if she continued pursuing space in such an “irrational manner, she could harm herself more than help her cause.” He then questioned her judgment and threatened to share that opinion with the press. His assistant enshrined the altercation in a memo, adding that Webb now “wondered what her motives could be in pursuing this further.”

He had good reason to wonder. By that time, she’d pleaded her case and received no’s from the highest reaches of the government, yet she was still boomeranging back at every authority. She’d already lobbied the vice president, and while Lyndon Johnson was polite to her while she was in the room, afterward he shared his unvarnished assessment with Webb: “Let’s stop this now!” Undeterred, she took her show on the road, stumping across the country at aviation clubs and airfields, where reporters noticed that her tone was increasingly bitter and acidic. Blocked by the vice president and by NASA’s director, there were only two higher authorities to whom she could turn.

One was Congress, where, like June Cobb, she appeared under oath to argue her case. In our screenplay, her congressional clash was our penultimate scene because it was there that her dream of space crashed spectacularly. But Jerrie’s real-life story had yet another chapter that we hadn’t included in the screenplay because, cinematically, her moves seemed desperate and hadn’t fit with our heroic portrayal.

President Kennedy became her new target. He was the only man left standing between Jerrie and the dream she would die for.

9.15 QJWIN ALMOST RUINED, APRIL 1962

One cable in the QJWIN series contained a nugget of information that became the Holy Grail to my investigation. That cable was sent on April 18, 1962, when a shoe dropped at headquarters and William Harvey panicked. Evidently something from QJWIN’s past had erupted that could ruin ZRRIFLE, so William Harvey fired off a brusque cable to the Luxembourg chief, through whom QJWIN was always contacted. That cable, written personally by Harvey, contained what the CIA refers to as “identifying information” about QJWIN.

QJBANNER-5 states QJWIN going on trial after Easter on Cobalt smuggling charge from 1957 or 58 and could receive up to six-year sentence. QJBANNER-5 does not know of current contact QJWIN but knew of interest in him October 60 and reported this info in case we interested. Please contact QJWIN for all details including specific charges and name prosecutor. If QJBANNER-5 info true we may wish attempt quash charges or arrange somehow salvage QJWIN for our purposes…. Fully anticipate we will need QJWIN.

The identifying information revealed in this cable was that QJWIN had been arrested for smuggling cobalt in 1957 or ’58. That tidbit sent me off into a frenzy of googling that lasted two years. Eventually I came across the only major cobalt-smuggling incident in that time frame—and it involved the arrest of the winsome blond Swedish dancer Wanda Baran, and not Jose Mankel.

Back when this arrest was making news in 1957 and ’58, William Harvey was the station chief in West Berlin, the crucial east-west border through which Wanda’s cobalt was headed. He knew exactly who was running nuclear ore to the Soviet Union right through his district. Jose Mankel was never arrested or mentioned in the news of this bust. Harvey knew that the “Cobalt Corridor” was run by Wanda Baran.

But when Luxembourg responded, the chief switched the incident to a nickel bust involving Mankel, as well as the Vincents.

Per QJWIN, LUXE customs prosecuting nickel smuggling charge since 1954. He and two Belgians involved. Trial over and verdict due week 29 April. He expects fine but confident can negotiate reasonable figure on basis ability to pay and can arrange small monthly payments.

So far I’ve found no evidence that either incident was being revisited by the courts in 1962, supporting the possibility that these cables were coded. If so, then the essence of Harvey’s message was “QJWIN has a problem. Go check with QJWIN and see how bad the situation is.”

So what was the problem that so worried Harvey? Or more to the point, did June Cobb have an issue that was troubling Harvey, causing him to fire off a coded cable to Luxembourg about QJWIN?

June Cobb Named as Contact of Martin and Mitchell on Their Defection Flight, April 19, 1962

Within twenty-four hours of Harvey sending that cable, the FBI in a memo named June Cobb as the person who’d met Martin and Mitchell’s plane in Havana, and the agency’s Security Office then forwarded the memo to Harvey. Two years earlier the FBI had broadly stated that someone had met the defectors, but now the FBI was getting specific about who it had been. If ZRRIFLE was planning to use Oswald against Kennedy, there could be no paper trail linking QJWIN to other American defectors. That type of problem could be ruinous for QJWIN.

Regardless of whether Martin and Mitchell’s defection was authentic or false, it’s undeniable that Harvey learned about the potential exposure for June Cobb at the same time that he became concerned that QJWIN’s usefulness could be impacted. Those two events line up within twenty-four hours. QJBANNER-5 would then be a person at the FBI who gave Harvey a heads-up about Cobb’s exposure. And that fits, because QJBANNER-5 also knew of Harvey’s interest in QJWIN from October 1960, matching when Cobb’s Martin and Mitchell contacts first appeared on the FBI’s radar.

Luckily, Luxembourg reported that QJWIN’s problem went away with a modest fine and a slap on the wrist. June Cobb had similar good luck, but her problem required the intervention of an invisible hand. Here’s how the CIA Office of Security forwarded the good news to Harvey on May 9, 1962:

COBB, Viola June

…It is apparent that the subject has become of some interest in the “Martin-Mitchell defection case” in view of the allegation that she may have been in contact with them during their flight. It is assumed that effort will be made by CIC [Army Intelligence] to resolve this possible identification.

And this is the document where someone added:

NSA or CIC will wash out the allegation, I assume.

June Cobb and QJWIN were now in the clear. William Harvey could breathe a sigh of relief, and Project ZRRIFLE could move to its next phase.

9.16 OSWALD RETURNS, 1962

As a penniless defector, Lee Harvey Oswald had little choice but to return to the Dallas–Fort Worth region. His mother and brother lived there, and he needed his family for a landing pad and for support. Even if Oswald’s return was at the behest of ZRRIFLE, he needed to arrive into a region that made sense. The Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex was always Oswald’s best and only option.

In the real-time documentary record, after the 1961 criminal recruitments were finished, ZRRIFLE became focused on moving the central agent, QJWIN, and their entire family to a new city. But this move wouldn’t be a simple relocation of the agent. It would involve substantial coordination and supervision from headquarters and focus heavily on the development of QJWIN’s operational cover.

There was only one city ever given consideration for this relocation, and that was Baden-Baden, Germany. If we are looking at coded locations, and ZRRIFLE was an operation targeting Kennedy, then Baden-Baden, Germany, would be the code for Dallas, Texas.

As the ZRRIFLE saga unfolds, we learn that two moves were being orchestrated simultaneously: (1) the resettlement of QJWIN’s family, including children, to the Baden-Baden region, and (2) QJWIN’s personal relocation to Baden-Baden.

On this chessboard, the two pieces in motion at this time were Oswald and Cobb, which led me to suspect that when the ZRRIFLE team was discussing the relocation of QJWIN’s family, it was code for the relocation of the Oswalds to Dallas–Fort Worth. And when the team discussed QJWIN’s personal move to Baden-Baden, they were discussing Agent Cobb’s relocation to Fort Worth.

I decided to test that theory by comparing QJWIN’s relocations in ZRRIFLE to the movements of Oswald and Cobb.

ZRRIFLE Gets Serious About “Germany” in Early 1962

In December 1961, Oswald wrote to his mother, saying for the first time that “maybe we’ll be able to settle in Texas.” Two days later Luxembourg told Harvey they were giving QJWIN the assignment to look for cover jobs in Germany at the beginning of the new year.

The challenge facing QJWIN was to find a cover job in Germany that wouldn’t take up too much of their time and that wasn’t lined up by the agency. Meanwhile, in mid-January 1962, Jerrie Cobb turned up at an astronautics conference in Washington, D.C.

On February 2, Luxembourg reported that QJWIN had completed the search but was struggling to find suitable cover employment. Their best leads were to act as a sales representative for a company or to establish an art dealership. Jerrie Cobb would wind up taking a job in Fort Worth with Bell Helicopter in early 1963, a lead she may have gotten at the D.C. astronautics conference. But the biggest revelation from QJWIN’s scouting mission was that they liked Baden-Baden as the choice for ZRRIFLE’s location.

According to QJWIN, the selling point for Baden-Baden was that it had “French schooling available for [QJWIN’S] children,” a heartwarming concern that soon became the primary focus for Harvey’s assassin-recruiting unit. We are supposed to believe that on an assassination-related mission, Harvey, Silver, QJWIN, and the Luxembourg chief became sincerely invested in the relocation and schooling of QJWIN’s children—so much so that they selected a location for the program around these children’s needs.

It raises a lot of questions. Why would this secretive team have tolerated children moving into the region where QJWIN was developing a cover for recruiting assassins? Couldn’t Harvey have hired an assassin-recruiter who didn’t come shackled with this burdensome complication?

By now, there was a whole lot in this QJWIN file that seemed suspect. I didn’t believe Mankel signed slips at a typewriter or brought in travel receipts from visiting criminals. I found it bizarre that assassins were being recruited from France and Italy, America’s NATO allies, to kill foreign leaders. I couldn’t understand why QJWIN’s photo would be sent out into the field on an assassination assignment. But I did believe this team would use coded communications and misdirections, just as the Creation Document discussed. And I knew that if June Cobb was QJWIN, then ZRRIFLE was taking place in the United States.

These problems and more led me to wonder if “French schooling” in “Baden-Baden” could be the team’s code for the case officering and infrastructure available in Dallas for Oswald’s return. As of early 1962, QJWIN’s “family” was expected to arrive in “Baden-Baden” in May, matching Oswald’s anticipated arrival into the Fort Worth region from the Soviet Union. But the “children” wouldn’t make that final leap until QJWIN conducted one more scouting trip to evaluate Baden-Baden.

Scouting the Motorcade Route, May 1962

Just weeks before Oswald’s return, on the morning of May 19, 1962, Jerrie Cobb was milling about at the starting point of the Dallas Armed Forces Day Parade. The musicians, trucks, and convertibles were gathering in not-yet-famous Dealey Plaza for a march that started two blocks from the point where the president would be shot. Jerrie’s procession would traverse Dallas that day on much the same route taken by Kennedy’s deadly motorcade, but in perfect reverse.

Like Kennedy, Jerrie experienced that drive as a celebrity, since she was a judge for the beauty pageant affiliated with the parade. Five of her fellow judges were known local associates of Jack Ruby’s. One was the first person Ruby would call when he was jailed for killing Oswald. Another ran the hotel where Life and the Secret Service would sequester Oswald’s family after the killing. Several were listed in Ruby’s address book, and most were mentioned in the investigation into the president’s death.

On that steamy morning in May, at about the same time when Kennedy would do the same, Jerrie waved to the cheering crowd in Dallas from a convertible. Four days later William Harvey cabled Luxembourg:

Baden Baden Per OLLA 1463 seems good choice.

[Olla 1463 was the December 1961 dispatch sending QJWIN to scout Germany]

Resettling the “Children,” June–November 1962

Oswald arrived in the Fort Worth region three weeks later, on June 13, 1962. He stayed with relatives for short periods, followed by several transient rentals. Meanwhile, QJWIN conducted a series of housing surveys to resettle their “family” into just the right situation, surveys that occurred repeatedly over the next several months.

Oswald’s return to the United States marked ZRRIFLE’s chronological midpoint, and Baden-Baden was now locked in as the project’s location.

9.17 THE JULY 2 DECISION, JULY 2, 1962

Oswald’s homecoming marked seminal changes for ZRRIFLE, the most profound of which I refer to as “the July 2 Decision.” Gathering at headquarters just three weeks after Oswald’s return were William Harvey, Arnold Silver, and, I suspect, QJWIN. The tip-off that something pivotal occurred at this meeting would come six months later, when the Luxembourg chief, frustrated by the lack of communications coming from headquarters, asked if “the July decision for the operation still stands.” A vital decision was made at this meeting, after which ZRRIFLE’s communications went much more deeply underground.

So what was the important decision? Silver made no mention of it the next day, when he drafted a memorandum about the meeting. In his July 3, 1962, memo, he pondered QJWIN’s relocation to Baden-Baden, the cost of the mission, and the need to figure out a covert way for QJWIN to draw funds. This was also the point at which Silver recounted the criminal contenders but with little enthusiasm.

Our best clue about what the July 2 Decision might have been comes from the Luxembourg chief, in a cable he drafted leading into the meeting. In late April 1962, the team was still waiting for Harvey to settle a matter that had long been in limbo. Here’s how Luxembourg laid down the status:

While we do not know present long-term plans for QJWIN, he has no lead to other candidates. His potential appears restricted [to] activation two candidates [that he met with Santelli] or personal spot action.

As we learned from Harvey’s congressional testimony, when assassination was discussed, everyone—including the senators—defaulted to using the terms executive action, direct action, or simply action as a substitute for assassination. In his testimony, he never called the generic recruiting of personnel “action.” In ZRRIFLE, an operation that Harvey admitted was developing a mechanism for murder, personal spot action meant the direct act of killing the target.

Harvey and Silver had long eliminated Carl Grossman for this role, and now, according to the Luxembourg chief, the only remaining contenders were QJWIN and the two criminals interviewed by Santelli. We know Silver’s preference, which he suggested to Harvey after Grossman was dropped. He liked QJWIN for this role.

On July 3, Silver pondered the use of the two criminals and concluded that either, or both, could be activated “if needed.” It doesn’t sound like they got the job. Personal spot action was never mentioned again. Whatever choice was made on July 2 became the plan the team followed until the end of this mission.

After the July 2 Decision, the salary payments for QJWIN in ZRRIFLE continued like clockwork, but communications about ZRRIFLE became more infrequent. In fact, by late 1962, cables between Luxembourg and headquarters became so sparse that Luxembourg informed Harvey that “absent any communications to the contrary I am basing direction for QJWIN on the plan [Harvey] suggested in July.” This cable indicates that the plan was moving forward in the background, despite fewer communications. The decision made in July was the plan ZRRIFLE would follow.

ZRRIFLE Midway

Oswald’s return marks the midway point of ZRRIFLE, so it’s a good time to review the project’s status. If the plan set forth in the Creation Document held, and if my interpretation of these documents is correct, then surprisingly many of ZRRIFLE’s objectives were already completed by mid-1962.

SILVER’S NOTES. ZRRIFLE:

may not officially inform the agency director and, therefore, not the president

may use a CIA staffer to commit the killing

will be spotting assets within the United States

will be using CIA assets who pass as foreigners

will be constructed to blame the Soviet bloc

will recruit assets in criminal circles

will use local CIA stations in some capacity

will center on one crucial agent, QJWIN

will involve the creation of a false 201 file within the agency’s paperwork as cover

Everything on Silver’s list was either completed or well under way by the time of Oswald’s return. His list focused on the recruitment of assets, and by the summer of 1962, that job was done. QJWIN was a CIA employee and was the leading contender for personal spot action. If Roselli was Santelli, then criminal assets had been met and recruited within the United States. Mexico City station was used to communicate with Cobb, and Oswald’s involvement would cast blame on the Soviets. Last but not least, Cobb’s 201 file had begun its false narrative.

ZRRIFLE was following Silver’s blueprint to a tee.

HARVEY’S NOTES. ZRRIFLE:

uses a new and unique assassination weapon being developed by Gottlieb and others

involves technology coordinated with Ledford and U-2-level engineering

will use coded communications and may deploy sophisticated encryption

will involve Bissell, Harvey, Silver, Gottlieb, “Resew,” and “max 2–3” others

will use a falsified CIA cover file to place the blame on Russian intelligence

may include in QJWIN’s 201 file a false narrative that they were recruited by Soviets

Harvey’s list focused heavily on the development of the Magic Button. While this area of the plot is opaque, QJWIN was grilled about a long-ago conversation they’d had with an official who worked at a U.S. airbase about a “sample of a new model Belgian gun.” ZRRIFLE’s communications appear to be coded, and the small team Harvey assembled remained the project’s operational core. There were only two incomplete tasks on Harvey’s list, and both involved casting blame on Russian intelligence.

ZRRIFLE’s final year would focus almost exclusively on the ongoing construction of its operational cover.

9.18 JERRIE TARGETS KENNEDY, JULY 1962–JANUARY 1963

Jerrie claimed she’d give her life to reach space, but her pleas to the vice president and Congress had fallen on deaf ears. So like a salmon swimming upstream against insurmountable odds, she began a campaign to reach the nation’s highest authority. “Respectfully request appointment to discuss women in space program” was her first telegram to President Kennedy on July 20, 1962.

JFK punted her to NASA, where director James Webb must have cringed at the assignment. But his letter in response patiently explained to Jerrie that it was “impossible” for the president to meet with her since the use of women had been “quite thoroughly explored.” He added he would continue a dialogue “if you think it will serve any useful purpose.” Jerrie ricocheted back within days.

If you would just give me a chance to work out on the simulators when they are not busy, then we would know if I needed to go back and get the [engineering] degree and jet test time. I beg of you, just for the opportunity to prove myself.

She then fired off a second telegram to Kennedy asking him to reconsider, accompanied by a pressure campaign of wires and letters she orchestrated from the Mercury 13. Kennedy drop-kicked her down to NASA again, and this time Webb sent a curt and pointed rejection.

Did she really think the third time would be the charm or that sending Kennedy her scrapbook would prove to him her worth? Along with the clippings, she enclosed an emotional letter, which started by predicting another damaging rejection:

It is difficult to write this letter knowing it will be read by your secretaries and assistants and the chances are slim that it will get through to you.

Jerrie’s new tactic was to beg Kennedy to blast her on a suborbital X-15 flight, a military jet that would make her the first woman in space, albeit with an asterisk. Pushing past the possible, she implored Kennedy to initiate her idea on a “rush basis.” But her heavy sign-off, “may the Lord guide you in your decision,” failed to move the president.

Webb powered up his typewriter again, and this time the gloves were off. After spelling out that he was writing at Kennedy’s request, Webb slammed her with NASA’s painfully discriminatory position: that she wasn’t qualified for space and that female candidates would need the “maximum amount of experience as jet test pilots” as well as engineering and science training. That was a qualification even Glenn didn’t meet. To add insult to injury, he restated his personal opinion that she’d been of no use as a NASA consultant.

Having appealed to the nation’s highest authority and every authority below it, Jerrie now had no choice but to accept her loss and move on. But rational behavior was not in her playbook. Instead, she told a reporter that men, as a gender, were too “silly” for space and offered to swap places with Glenda, NASA’s space chimpanzee.

Trolling the heroic astronauts was public relations suicide, but Jerrie had a point. NASA’s talented primate, Glenda, was flying simulators at chimp college, yet she hadn’t tested any jets before entering the program. Of course, requiring women to have jet testing experience was NASA’s cruel catch-22. Only men could test military jets, making it impossible for women to get the necessary experience.

And this brings us to the great disconnect hiding within Jerrie’s space saga. She knew what the barrier was to her becoming an astronaut. She needed jet testing experience. If she had had even some jet testing experience, she could have called NASA’s sexist bluff. She articulated the problem quite bluntly at her congressional hearing:

It is the jet test pilot experience that makes it impossible for women to meet the [astronaut] qualifications.

That’s why the next revelation is so stunning. The shocking truth is, Jerrie had the ability to qualify as an astronaut. She simply chose to remain unqualified.

Jerrie’s Jet Testing Problem, May 1962–December 1963

NASA’s wizard of rockets, Wernher von Braun, was nothing if not a brilliant mind, and in his pen pal relationship with Jerrie, he put his finger on the fallacy of her space pursuit. At the bottom of a letter he wrote her on May 9, 1962, he posed the $64 million question:

You aren’t slated to test the new Jet Commander by any chance??

Von Braun was aware that the company Jerrie worked for, Aero Commander in Oklahoma City, was about to enter the flight testing phase for its new business jet, the Jet Commander. If Jerrie wanted to qualify for space, all she had to do was start testing the jet at the company she worked for, a company she claimed was bending over backward to help her reach space. Von Braun knew of what he spoke. Jerrie was wearing the ruby slippers. So why wasn’t she using them?

But when the Jet Commander rolled out onto an Oklahoma tarmac for the first time on January 26, 1963, Jerrie was nowhere to be seen. She’d just relocated to the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex two days before. The jet didn’t take off that day due to faulty wiring, but within a week it was pictured in flight. Meanwhile, Jerrie was enrolled in an immersive class at Bell Helicopter to expand her licensure on numerous craft as an equivalent experience to jet testing.

Aero Commander tested its jet all throughout 1963, the same year Jerrie frantically got certified on helicopters and gliders, and even tested experimental jump balloons. In fact, Jerrie was in the wilds of Minnesota practicing jump balloons when she missed NASA’s application deadline for their second phase of astronaut hiring. She claimed she wasn’t aware of the deadline, but NASA differed, saying in a statement to the press that the cutoff was always July 1, “and she knew that.”

I pressed Jerrie about the Jet Commander disconnect, and why she hadn’t tested it, while we were touring the Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. We were gazing over a balcony at a lunar module when she matter-of-factly stated, “I’ve logged thousands of jet hours, many of them in a Commander.” She then squared her shoulders my way and locked into her patented gaze. “And I did test the Jet Commander.” She was scanning for my reaction after debunking her life story in seven words.

How do we explain this dissonance? Jerrie needed only one qualification—a qualification she could have met in her hometown at the company she worked for. So why didn’t she go for it? Evidently, she had more important matters to attend to in Dallas–Fort Worth.

9.19 BELL HELICOPTER, JERRIE, AND THE PAINES, 1963

Even though QJWIN’s family was settled, QJWIN’s personal move to Baden-Baden was still unfinished as the calendar flipped to 1963. The most pressing task remaining was landing a cover job that would explain QJWIN’s presence in the region. Finally, on January 19, 1963, Luxembourg informed headquarters:

QJWIN now installed and working at cover.

FIGURE 9N. Jerrie after soloing a Bell helicopter on January 20, 1963.

The next day Jerrie Cobb was pictured in pearls and white gloves while piloting a Bell helicopter in Fort Worth. She’d just completed her first day of training at Bell’s Helicopter School, where she was immersed in a monthlong program to earn a commercial rotorcraft rating. Jerrie wanted to be among the first fifty women to hold that license. She wound up being Whirly Girl number 53.

Bell’s PR department sent out a glowing release, claiming her speedy solo after eighty-three minutes was a record that “should stand up for a long time.” But Jerrie wasn’t just angling to get her license. She was planning to continue a relationship with Bell throughout the summer, demonstrating the chopper and hustling PR. That was supposed to be her job at Aero Commander, but on her fifth day at Bell, Aero Commander’s business jet rolled out for its first flight with Jerrie nowhere to be seen.

Upon earning a helicopter rating, Jerrie typed up a quick note to the Whirly Girls aviation club, boasting that she would be demonstrating a Bell chopper in the Paris Airshow that June. The Salon Aéronautique was an airborne extravaganza featuring death-defying stunts, so choreographing her crowd-pleasing flight for Paris gave Jerrie an excuse to be seen in Fort Worth from February to June 1963 and perhaps beyond.

Many readers will now recognize Jerrie’s proximity to all things Oswald. Within days of Jerrie receiving her license, the Oswalds went to a party where they met Ruth Paine, whose husband, Michael, was a research engineer at Bell. But Michael’s ties to the company ran much deeper than simple employment. His stepfather had invented the Bell helicopter, and Michael held a security clearance at the facility where Jerrie had been practicing every single day.

Oswald and the Paines, February–April 1963

A lot has been written about the Paines and their unusual relationship to Oswald, but as I pored over the Kennedy assassination books, I found that not many researchers had looked closely at the women in intelligence who are named within the JFK Assassination Records. Whenever I asked other researchers about women’s roles in the Cold War CIA, I heard comments like “Oh, there were old ladies in tennis shoes who kept the files,” but with few exceptions, these women were seen as names that signed off on memos and seldom more.

My work was telling me there was a lot more to the women behind those signatures, and that the CIA knew a great cover story when it saw one. Women in tennis shoes were completely nonthreatening, but what were those women up to when they weren’t signing a file? And into what alter identities did some of them disappear?

But one woman in the Kennedy case has been taken seriously by almost everyone. Ruth Paine was the mild-mannered church lady who made the Oswald family her pet project for the year leading up to the assassination. She has also been dogged by the allegation that she had CIA ties, something she strenuously and consistently denies to this day.

Ruth Paine immediately glommed on to the Oswalds upon meeting them in early 1963, and within weeks, she absorbed Oswald’s wife and baby into her modest one-story home in Irving, Texas, between Dallas and Fort Worth. Michael simultaneously moved out, in an amicable separation, while still paying Ruth’s bills, expenditures that were ultimately supporting the Oswalds, too, while Lee looked for better work. This arrangement has come under tremendous scrutiny, and the intensity of Ruth’s involvement with the Oswalds has struck many as appearing similar to that of an intelligence handler.

From the moment she met them until the bullet struck Kennedy, Ruth was the nonstop sherpa for the Oswalds, chauffeuring them to and fro and serving as their trusted adviser. Ruth was even teaching Lee how to drive, in between whisking his wife and baby on errands. It’s become both a cliché and a book title that everything tying Oswald to the crime sprang from Ruth Paine’s garage, including the murder weapon. Ruth even suggested the Book Depository job to Oswald just weeks before the crime, placing him in the perch from which the shots were taken.

But while Ruth was among Lee Oswald’s only friends, it was her friendship with his wife, Marina, that raised eyebrows. In her testimony to the Warren Commission, Ruth explained that she was drawn to Oswald’s wife due to the allure of practicing conversational Russian with a native speaker. But after reading Ruth’s letters to Marina, in her archive at Swarthmore College, I sensed either a besotted emotional attachment or a campaign to ensnare the vulnerable.

“Everything you do and say is interesting to me,” Ruth once professed to Marina in a letter. Here are some of Ruth’s other clingy pronouncements: “If Lee doesn’t wish to live with you anymore and prefers you go to the Soviet Union think about the possibility of living with me.” “It disturbs me a great deal that I explain my thoughts so badly, but it disturbs me more not to hear news from you and not to know what you are thinking and doing.” “Marina, come to my house the last part of September without fail, either for two months or two years. And don’t worry about money.” “I love you Marina, and want to live with you. I hope you and Lee will agree.”

The Warren Commission accepted the premise that the Paines’ extraordinary support for the Oswalds sprang from the couple’s devotion to the Quaker church and its charitable underpinnings, particularly the Quakers’ direct outreach to Russian citizens. And perhaps, on the surface, that does sound quite reasonable. But having grown up in a Quaker community in the same greater Philadelphia region that formed the Paines’ ideology, I couldn’t help but notice that Michael and Ruth Paine made highly unusual Quakers.

If I had to pick one view that is the bedrock of Quaker spirituality, it would be pacifism. Throughout the 1960s, against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, Quaker pacifism became so strident, it overtook all other spiritual concerns. At our church, if the Paines had arrived, they would have been warmly welcomed, but discussions would have swiftly moved to Bell Helicopter and its role as a military supplier for the war. The Paines would have been subjected to intense but friendly pressure to bring their support of Bell in line with the thinking of the church.

You can imagine a person considering an abortion in a Catholic setting, or a gay family in a church that believes in conversion therapy, as examples of where one just doesn’t fit in. At our Quaker meetinghouse, I once mentioned having seen a Coast Guard pamphlet about opportunities for women, and my comment was met with scowls and warnings that the Coast Guard was part of the military complex, not just rescuing stranded people, like I had in mind. I knew better than to say anything positive about the Coast Guard again, and I remember the embarrassment and shame at having brought it up. The Coast Guard was buying a lot of Bell helicopters. So was the war in Vietnam.

Another thing I remember from my childhood was overhearing church elders discussing how federal agents were interested in our antiwar work. Our peace advocacy was viewed as radical, and our activism was the target of government surveillance. The possibility that an undercover agent could be in attendance at our church was pondered in my presence. In the 1960s, wearing a cloak of Quakerism would be great cover for an agent interested in infiltrating the left, either at home or abroad, where Quakers were particularly active.

Informed by those experiences, I decided to give Ruth Paine a closer look. While many before me have questioned Ruth’s links to the Oswalds, I was able to approach the problem through a different lens. My work with the June/Jerrie and Pearson/Pierson dualities had given me a unique window into how covert players were being hidden.

9.20 RUTH PAINE AND MARILYN MURRET, 1963

By the end of April 1963, when Oswald’s wife Marina and baby were still living with Ruth Paine, she drove Lee to a bus station in Fort Worth, where he hopped a ride to New Orleans in search of better work. Lee was always short on cash, so upon arrival, he cold-called his aunt, uncle, and cousins on his mother’s side, the Murrets, and asked to stay with them. About a week later Ruth drove Marina and the baby down to join him in a new apartment. But during his first days in New Orleans, Oswald bunked under the same roof as his first cousin—a trim, dark-haired woman named Marilyn Dorothea Murret.

The Murrets, like the Oswalds, were a scrappy blue-collar family living paycheck to paycheck, yet Marilyn Dorothea Murret’s curriculum vitae reads like that of a trust-fund debutante turned jet-setting socialite. The daughter of a dock worker and bookie would later tell the Warren Commission that she had attended Loyola University, Louisiana State, Tulane, St. Louis University, Duke, the University of California, the Sorbonne in Paris, and the University of Madrid.

Her travels were even more exotic, with stays in Brussels, Amsterdam, Bermuda, Havana, and Peru in 1954–55, followed by another European trip in ’58, and then a longer stay in Japan in 1959–60, where she taught school for a time. Murret described to the Warren Commission a three-and-a-half-year stint circumnavigating the globe with visits to Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Beirut, Egypt, Cyprus, Pakistan, and virtually all of Europe, where she attended the elite schools. Based on the FBI reports on Murret and my genealogical research, she traveled frequently from 1954 to late 1962, an eight-to-nine-year period.

By the time the Warren Commission caught up with her for an interview in 1964, she’d settled back down into a humble existence in New Orleans teaching at a local school. The commission never explored how her part-time work as an English tutor had financed her fabulous travels and education. The interviewer did elicit, however, that the only university where she earned a degree was Tulane, a milestone that was repeated in her obituary.

I combed every Tulane yearbook from 1945 to 1959 and failed to find a trace of her. I did, however, find her picture in the Loyola University yearbook from 1947. Here is that photo, displayed side by side with a similar camera angle of Ruth Paine.

FIGURE 9O. Left: Marilyn Murret, Loyola University, 1947. Right: Ruth Paine, still from a video interview, 1963.

And here is Murret’s 1948 Louisiana State University photo displayed beside one of Ruth Paine.

FIGURE 9P. Left: Marilyn Murret, Louisiana State University, 1948. Right: Ruth Paine, still from a video interview, 1963.

Based on what Jerrie told me about June’s impersonating, combined with my other discoveries, I’d come to believe that the temporary borrowing of identities was how the illusion of taking covert actions and then disappearing was being accomplished. And when a government agency finds a useful tactic, it tends to repeat it.

I was starting to wonder if some families who had had run-ins with the law were asked, as part of a deal, to enter into a secrecy agreement where the identities of family members could be borrowed. Catherine Taaffe’s husband served time for check fraud. June Cobb’s fiancé was busted for drug running. And the patriarch of the Murret family had a history of bookmaking and a prior arrest for forgery.

Astonishing Similarities and Timeline Synchronicities

Ruth Paine and Marilyn Murret share the similarity that both women testified to the Warren Commission about Lee Harvey Oswald’s activities in the lead-up to the crime. Paine answered questions put to her by the Warren Commission in Washington, D.C., on March 18 and 19, 1964. Two weeks later Murret was interviewed by a commission lawyer in the privacy of the New Orleans Courthouse. Their combined testimony provided information about a substantial percentage of Oswald’s movements in the year before the killing.

When I plotted Murret’s and Paine’s whereabouts in 1963 on a timeline, they checkerboarded in a pattern similar to what I’d seen in the June-Jerrie timeline. Paine was active with the Oswalds in Fort Worth from February, when she met them, until late April, when she drove Marina and the baby to New Orleans. When Ruth dropped the family off, Murret and Paine were briefly in the same city at the same time, an alignment that also happened occasionally between June and Jerrie Cobb.

In midsummer, both Paine and Murret departed on lengthy road trips. Ruth drove north to see her family, including a stay at her sister’s, who was a CIA employee. That information was never plumbed by the Warren Commission, but it was later discovered that the CIA was listed as her employer in her 1961 telephone directory. Meanwhile, as Ruth headed north, Marilyn drove south, meandering across Mexico and Central America, with little corroboration. At summer’s end, both women returned to New Orleans: Marilyn spent Labor Day with the Oswalds, after which Ruth picked up Marina and the baby and shuttled them back to Fort Worth.

Murret cited no fewer than nine universities that she attended in three countries, while Ruth’s alma mater, Antioch College, required her to remain on campus only for the first three months. After that, she was off campus for most of her collegiate tenure. The FBI never tried to corroborate the long list of work-related internships that made up the bulk of Paine’s college credits. Ruth came away with a degree in education, while Marilyn Murret was a teacher.

But Marilyn shares the most shocking similarity of all not with Ruth Paine but with Lee Harvey Oswald. Incredibly, the U.S. government listed both Marilyn Murret and Lee Harvey Oswald as citizens suspected of defecting to the Soviet Union between 1946 and 1964.

Marilyn Murret and Her Suspected Defection

Robert Allen and Paul Scott were investigative journalists with deep inside-the-beltway sources who gained access to the government’s internal defector list and published an article about it on March 23, 1964. After the Kennedy assassination, according to Allen and Scott, President Johnson ordered an exhaustive review of defectors, and several agencies collaborated to compile the list of 137 names. Paul Scott personally saw the list and said it highlighted the “Ten Most Wanted” defectors who were still at large. June Cobb’s pals, Martin and Mitchell, made the top ten. So did Marilyn Dorothea Murret.

When Allen and Scott published their column, they had no idea that Murret was Lee Harvey Oswald’s first cousin. But the Warren Commission most certainly did. Beltway insiders closely followed Allen and Scott’s national column, and that article ran just when the Warren Commission was preparing to depose Marilyn Murret.

Two weeks after the column appeared, the commission’s lawyer interviewed Marilyn in a private setting. She was not asked if she ever defected. She was not asked if she had traveled to the Soviet Union. She was not asked why Allen and Scott had seen her name on that list. She was not asked how she felt about the article naming her as a “ten most wanted” defector. And she was given no opportunity to clarify the record or even to say if the report was mistaken.

While the Warren Commission pretended the column didn’t exist, the FBI took immediate action. But instead of interviewing Murret about her suspected defection, the FBI grilled journalists Allen and Scott. Scott told the FBI he’d uncovered even more dirt on Murret, linking her to a professor with a “communist apparatus.” That prompted the bureau to wrap up the mess in a report that implied Paul Scott was unstable.

Years later, in 1977, Scott remembered that the column had “greatly upset high ranking State Department and CIA officials” who wanted to know how he’d gotten his hands on the list. The CIA even illegally wiretapped Scott’s phone to determine his sources.

Ruth Paine’s fluency in Russian would have been a must for anyone working in a false defector program. Let’s remember that Harvey and Silver were seeking to recruit CIA agents whose ties to the agency were untraceable. Did Harvey and Silver troll the waters of the false defector program more than once? And was ZRRIFLE hidden in the hands of a few who were playing many parts?

9.21 OSWALD AND THE RIFLE IN ZRRIFLE

After Oswald arrived back in America, he attempted to find stable employment to support his wife and daughter, no easy task for a man who’d just returned from the Soviet Union. Many authors have chronicled the ease with which Oswald reentered the country while receiving minimal scrutiny from the authorities. It was in that vacuum that Oswald began yet another strange ideological odyssey, once again flirting with Marxism and nursing his various grudges against America.

If ZRRIFLE targeted Kennedy, then Lee Harvey Oswald was central to that plan. But what exactly was his role? Let’s remember that the most important component of William Harvey’s executive action program was to point suspicion in the wrong direction. That’s why I took a deep look at Oswald’s movements in the year before the assassination.

The man who went to Dealey Plaza with a rifle was going to be the one to take the blame. His actions before and after the killing would lead investigators to form conclusions about his motive. But if these actions were part of a covert operation, then they would have been orchestrated with great care, so that they would lead investigators to conclusions that would topple dominoes in a direction that was preordained, falling away from the true motive for the crime.

Branding the Rifle, Oswald Shoots at Walker, Spring of 1963

After weeks of delays, Harvey cabled Luxembourg on March 4, 1963, and announced that ZRRIFLE’s funding was renewed for the next year. Suddenly things broke free in Dallas, and the mission shifted away from resettling QJWIN’s “children” and pivoted into a fast-moving series of events.

The same day funding was approved, Marina accepted Ruth Paine’s offer to drop by for a visit. Days later Oswald mail-ordered the rifle that would be used to shoot at Kennedy. When that rifle came, Marina snapped a picture of Lee posing with it, a photo that would later appear on Life’s cover.

A month after Harvey confirmed that ZRRIFLE was a go, Oswald took aim at a man he’d been stalking for four weeks.

On April 10, General Edwin Walker was the person in Oswald’s crosshairs or, more precisely, just to the side of Oswald’s crosshairs. After planning the shot meticulously, Oswald missed his target, either by accident or by design, depositing a bullet in Walker’s wall. Anyone targeting Kennedy with that rifle would now be linked to the shot at Walker, too, and it would be assumed that a gunman who shot at Walker disagreed with his beliefs.

Walker was a rabid anti-communist, a racist, and a right-wing radical who harbored a hatred for the Kennedys. The Kennedys, in turn, hated Walker in equal measure. JFK demanded Walker’s resignation over the general’s overt political acts, after which Attorney General Robert Kennedy committed Walker to a mental facility, charging him with sedition and insurrection. Walker posted bond and, upon release, was hailed as a hero in his John Birch Society circles, where he found plenty of others who loathed the Kennedys with a similarly rabid passion.

One of them surely would have been William Harvey, himself an ardent anti-communist, a right-wing hardliner, and, like Walker, someone who harbored a grudge against the Kennedys. Harvey’s widow would later give an interview where she called the Kennedys “scum” and said RFK was a “true enemy” of her husband’s. Legend has it that Harvey once visited Kennedy in the Oval Office while toting a concealed pistol. A plaster patch in a wall from a single bullet was a small price to pay for branding a rifle as belonging to someone with the opposite views of those who were mobilizing the plot.

By the end of April, Oswald had successfully laid down a record of who he wasn’t working with. He now needed to cast blame on those whom the plotters were framing for the crime.

Oswald’s Summer of Castro, May–August 1963

After depositing evidence in Walker’s wall, Oswald headed to New Orleans, ostensibly to look for better work, but it was his extracurricular activities that took up all his time. Ripping a page from June Cobb’s book, Oswald launched himself into several controversial incidents, complete with media appearances and brushes with the law.

Upon his arrival in New Orleans, Oswald contacted an organization where June Cobb pulled invisible strings—the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, based in New York City. Fair Play told Oswald they weren’t keen on his idea of starting a Louisiana chapter, but he launched one anyway and began guerrilla promotions. A news crew filmed him handing out FPCC flyers, after which he got in a scuffle resulting in his arrest. That escapade led to a radio appearance where he posed as a spokesman for Fair Play for Cuba. By fall, Oswald had been recorded in numerous ways shilling for Castro, and his mugshot branded him as a militant ready to commit violence for the cause.

Had Oswald escaped Dallas that day, would he have fled to Cuba, drawing the investigation to Castro’s door? If a part two to ZRRIFLE had been planned, it never came to be. Oswald was arrested and was shot by Jack Ruby two days later.

The Braided Threads of Intelligence Covers

Intelligence covers can be layered constructs, which I have come to think of as braided narrative threads. Pull one thread, and it reveals one cover story above the rest. Oswald’s Cuban narrative was his biggest, brightest thread and the one to be discovered first. Had all gone well, the world’s fury would have turned on Castro, and the island’s liberation would have been seen as a deserved response. But all did not go well.

A lesser thread was Oswald’s instability. Was that thread pulled forward after his arrest, out of necessity, leading to the conclusion that he’d committed the crime alone? The beauty of a lone nut is they have no collaborators, a useful cover if Oswald was the only one exposed.

But a third thread appears to have been interwoven throughout Oswald’s tapestry, and it was the deepest thread of all. This strand was spun during Oswald’s trip to Mexico City, where he made contact with a Soviet operative, an encounter that was documented within the local CIA station’s classified files. Assuming that Oswald’s movements were an orchestrated cover, and if he and his collaborators were exposed, this narrative could be used, as Harvey and Silver put it, to blame the Soviets in case of blow.

Each player who had exposure at Dealey Plaza would need a cover that was similarly constructed, with several ways to cast the blame. While Oswald was busy braiding threads, QJWIN was doing much the same.

9.22 JUNE COBB AND THE KGB, 1963

June Cobb spent her first two years in Mexico City publicizing the story that she was a soldier of fortune with a fondness for Castro, with the added bonus that she did not look like Jerrie. This was the most prominent thread in her cover, and the first one that anyone trying to learn more about her would find. But like Oswald, she was busy spinning secondary filaments that could be amplified or suppressed based on operational needs.

June’s transfer to Mexico City had come with paperwork claiming she was susceptible to communist influence. That kindling hid in her file awaiting a spark, which arrived in early 1963, when June took the wrong lover. Her file reported that June was now the “mistress” of British reporter John Rettie and was living with him most of the time. At first glance, this romance appears to be disconnected from her intelligence schemes, but as always with June Cobb, all is not what it seems.

Rettie made a name for himself on a journalistic assignment in Moscow, where he published the 1956 secret speech given by Khrushchev, a transcript passed to him by a KGB agent. By the time he found himself in bed with June Cobb, Rettie was no stranger to the machinations of espionage.

About the time June began romancing Rettie in Mexico City, MI6 asked the CIA if it could borrow her. By this time, her file was teeming with warnings that she could be swayed by a communist power, so one might surmise that the agency would have warned the Brits about her vulnerability. Instead, the CIA minimized its relationship with her and made no mention of her communist bent. That left the door open for Great Britain to use her.

Two months later MI6 warned the CIA that Rettie was suspected of having blown a joint MI6/CIA collaboration while in Moscow, raising the possibility that Rettie could be a KGB agent. Of course, the Brits probably got that information from Cobb—but the result was that Cobb’s CIA file now contained documents noting her susceptibility to a communist power and others saying she was dating someone who could be a KGB spy. And that’s interesting, given that one of ZRRIFLE’s goals was to blame Russian intelligence if something went wrong.

When the CIA learned that Cobb was possibly sleeping with the KGB, did they run security checks on her—things like polygraphs, surveillance, or damage control? Nope. And while the agency considered telling the Brits that she was a security risk, it opted to stay mum unless MI6 brought it up. Meanwhile, another memo dropped into Cobb’s file slamming her for “emotional vacillation and potential susceptibility to leftist indoctrination.” This was based on old evaluations of Cobb’s labile personality that were never given credence before, but now, combined with Pierson’s warnings, became the new narrative. An order was given that Cobb be handled with “exceptional caution,” but of course, no caution was exercised.

Eight days before Kennedy died, MI6 sent the CIA an explicit warning that Rettie was probably a KGB agent and had been since his Moscow days. For the sake of Rettie’s reputation, I’ll fast-forward to let you know that he lived out his retirement in the English countryside as a citizen in good standing, and a later document said he had been an MI6 agent all along. But during the time frame of Kennedy’s murder, the CIA’s files say that Rettie was a KGB spy and that June Cobb was living with him. If Cobb were ever linked to wrongdoing, her file would suggest she could be under Soviet control.

But there’s more. On October 28, 1963, due to an administrative glitch, June’s CIA operational approval, meaning the administrative paperwork formally required for her use as an agent, was canceled due to someone’s failure to fill out her paperwork on time. That snafu was quickly resolved, but it effectively took Cobb off the rolls as an agent just before the Kennedy assassination occurred. Had anyone asked, in the wake of the killing, if Cobb was their agent, the CIA’s answer would have been no. Two months later that glitch was resolved.

Days after the assassination, John Rettie was living with a different woman, whom he would soon marry. That made me wonder: Did the Rettie-Cobb romance even happen? Or was it yet another fiction spun in QJWIN’s false 201 file?

June Cobb had woven quite a tapestry for herself in Mexico City, tanking her reputation by sleeping with the wrong man. That tactic worked well—so why not use it again?

9.23 WOMAN INTO SPACE, SUMMER OF 1963

Jerrie’s dream of being the first woman in space crashed spectacularly in mid-June 1963, when Valentina Tereshkova beat her to it. The Soviet parachutist circled the globe forty-eight times, even though she had never dreamed of space and wasn’t even a pilot. On the heels of the Russian achievement, Jerrie launched her ill-titled autobiography, Woman into Space.

Ernest Hemingway would have envied the unprecedented rollout that accompanied Jerrie’s stiff and star-crossed tome. Day after day, week after week, newspapers ran excerpts from the book in a nationally syndicated ten-part series. Readers had no need to buy the book because they’d already read it over coffee. Throughout the summer of 1963, Jerrie’s series was running somewhere in the United States almost every single day.

Shrewdly laced within her biography was a ticking time bomb named Jack Ford. Jerrie devoted three chapters to her love affair with Ford, the handsome pilot who owned Fleetways and gave Jerrie her first break ferrying planes. They fell in love while winging warbirds over the Andes, or so the story went. It all began when Jack cooed his first “I love you” to Jerrie over the radio while both were in the air.

The moment we landed, I slid from the cockpit and ran to him across the field. He held out his arms, and when he kissed me there was a streak of grease on my face. My boss and teacher, respected and admired by all who knew him as a great pilot, had suddenly turned into a man.

But nowhere in her book did Jerrie bother to mention that Jack Ford was married at the time. Mary Zerbel Ford was an accomplished World War II ferry pilot who had met and married Jack while the two were stationed overseas. After the war, they co-founded Fleetways, the company they ran as a team until his death. Mary was at home managing Fleetways and raising his young daughter while Jerrie was off in exotic locales sleeping with her husband.

That meant that by publishing her autobiography, Jerrie threw the affair in the face of Ford’s family, while making no mention that Mary existed and claiming Mary’s husband as her own. That’s never good form, but in 1963 it could have ruined Jerrie Cobb. In that era, no grace was given for open marriages or wanderings of the heart, and blame fell harshly on the “other woman.” The fact that Jack had died in a plane crash in 1959 after divorcing Mary would only have cemented Jerrie’s reputation as a home-wrecker who was throwing the painful episode in the face of a grieving family. Jerrie Cobb was fortunate that Mary Ford remained silent.

In the context of the three-year arc of ZRRIFLE, Jerrie’s turnaround is quite stunning. At the outset, she was America’s sweetheart, a fresh-faced patriotic blond ready to serve her country by pioneering into space. But by 1963, she’d devolved into a bitter, feminist home-wrecker who resented the male astronauts and was too unstable for NASA to hire. That’s a spectacular downfall.

But Jerrie Cobb had not yet hit bottom.

9.24 RUSSIAN INTELLIGENCE SERVICES, SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 1963

The final cover for ZRRIFLE appears to have been crafted in the location where June Cobb had the most control. Mexico City was home to the largest CIA station in the world, a city where the watchful eyes and ears of U.S. intelligence rarely slept. Cover could be manufactured by moving people through space beneath its web of surveillance, leaving behind a veritable black box of telephone taps, surveillance records, and photographic evidence. Evidence could then be classified in perpetuity, destroyed, or discreetly shown to the right people, depending on the desired fallout.

In early October 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald and the disgruntled pilot Jerrie Cobb both descended upon Mexico City and spun out threads that were recorded by this web. Oswald’s movements were deemed relevant to the assassination and released. The records on Jerrie Cobb’s activities have yet to be declassified.

Oswald in Mexico City, September 27–October 2, 1963

With his summer in New Orleans behind him, Oswald abruptly hopped a bus and traveled to Mexico City, seeking a Russian travel visa. The fickle defector had changed his mind again about the United States and wanted to move back to the Soviet Union with his family.

This journey was what brought Oswald into the world of Elena Garro and to the doorstep of her cousins, the Durans, and their communist friends. His first stop was the Cuban embassy, where he spoke to Silvia Duran about obtaining a visa to spend several weeks in Havana before moving on to the Soviet Union. When the Cubans explained that he would also need a Russian visa, a belligerent Oswald relented and trudged over to the Soviet embassy. Neither embassy was in any hurry to help a flip-flopping defector play out a suspicious scheme. Oswald quickly found himself mired in red tape and viewed with skepticism by his iron curtain comrades.

The Mexico City CIA station routinely monitored the Cuban and Soviet embassies, although in different ways. A photo surveillance system targeted the Russians and should have documented Oswald entering or exiting, but those images did not survive. Neither did the audiotapes from his phone calls to the Soviets. What did survive were transcripts from those calls and witnesses who saw him at the Cuban embassy. While the gaps in the surviving record are troubling, the existing evidence indicates that Oswald, or someone impersonating him, had a lengthy conversation with a KGB agent at the Soviet embassy.

That encounter was hugely consequential because the person who waited on Oswald at the Soviet embassy, Valeri Kostikov, was known to the CIA as a member of the KGB’s Department Thirteen, its elite assassination unit. Oswald met with Kostikov at the embassy and later called the Russians on a tapped line, referencing that meeting. Then, upon returning to Texas, Oswald sent a letter to the Soviet embassy in Washington naming “Comrade Kostin” as the person he’d spoken to in Mexico.

Ten days later Jerrie Cobb was in the room with the same KGB assassin.

Jerrie in Mexico City, October 10–16, 1963

On October 10, 1963, Jerrie boarded a commercial flight for Mexico City, where she was to meet Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova, the two Soviet cosmonauts who’d recently been to space. The Fédération Aéronautique was holding its annual conference in the city, and the Soviets were sending their cosmonauts to steal the show.

Jackie Cochran, who had financed Jerrie’s Mercury 13, had a big hand in organizing the event and would be attending with the U.S. contingent. The oldest capital in North America was abuzz with the excitement.

But when Jerrie’s flight was delayed en route and she was stuck on the ground in Texas, she granted a lengthy interview to a reporter from the San Antonio Express. Her remarks to the journalist that day were nothing short of shocking. The jarring headline read:

Miss Cobb Willing to Go into Space With Russian

In the interview, Jerrie uttered the unthinkable: that the Soviet space program was more advanced than ours and that she would be “extremely happy” to share a capsule with a cosmonaut. She even planned to talk it over with Tereshkova, “woman to woman,” when they met hours later in Mexico City.

Jerrie was seizing upon media speculation that someday Americans and Russians might collaborate on joint space projects. But nobody in their right mind thought someday meant now, in an era when Americans were building fallout shelters to survive the Russians’ bombs. “It’s an idea I’ve often thought about,” she said of flying with the Soviets.

Personally, I would have no qualms about going to Russia to train for such a joint flight. After all, they’ve proven their superiority of spacecrafts and systems in the two cosmonaut missions and in much longer explorations than ours.

In the world of intelligence, there’s a tactic called a dangle. It’s when an inclination to defect or cooperate is dangled in front of a competing intelligence organization to lure them into a trap. Jerrie announced her interest in traveling to the Soviet Union to fly with the Russians hours before meeting the cosmonauts and their entourage in Mexico City.

A member of that entourage was Valeri Kostikov. His job was to stay within arm’s length of Gagarin and Tereshkova as half of their two-man security detail. That means when Jerrie was pitching her joint flight idea to the Russians, Kostikov was in earshot. The first event welcoming the cosmonauts to Mexico City was a reception held inside the Soviet embassy.

American newspapers published a picture of Jerrie seated with the cosmonauts at an opening gala. Reporters quoted her touting her preference for the Soviet system while in the room with the Russian contingent.

The Soviets are utilizing their women. They give equal rights to women.

Both Oswald and Jerrie expressed their preference for the Soviet system—both said they wanted to go to Russia—and both did so when they were in a room with Valeri Kostikov. Their Kostikov encounters occurred within days of each other and in settings where Oswald and Jerrie were surveilled, photographed, and recorded.

In the scenario where Oswald’s exit route from Dallas was leading him to a plane at Redbird, any person awaiting him would be suspected of being his collaborator. If that person was Jerrie, the trail would lead back to Mexico City, where both she and Oswald had encountered Kostikov while lobbying to go to the Soviet Union. KGB involvement would immediately be suspected, and Kostikov’s history with Department Thirteen would come to light, if the CIA chose to share it. Blame would quickly fall on the Russian Intelligence Services, just as William Harvey suggested it should.

Let’s remember that “blaming the Soviets” was to be used only “in case of blow.” This operation was only partially blown. Oswald was arrested, but QJWIN’s possible role was never exposed.

June Cobb and Her Man in Mexico, October 1963

Two days before Jerrie set foot in Mexico City, June completed a recent assignment. She’d just recruited a subagent and set him up to surveil a travel agency for the Mexico City station. The young man worked for Judith Ferreto, a communist who specialized in arranging travel to the Soviet Union. June’s new man was to report on who was seeking that travel.

Hours after June’s man was in place and reporting, Jerrie arrived in Mexico City while proclaiming she was interested in traveling to Russia. Was June’s man installed at that agency in order to document an inquiry from Jerrie about traveling to the Soviet Union?

I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for any documents the CIA has pertaining to the cosmonaut events in Mexico City in October 1963. I also requested all the CIA files on Jerrie Cobb. My request for Jerrie’s file was denied on the basis that she has never been publicly identified as a CIA employee, and my request for the cosmonaut event was also rejected. The CIA needed an eighteen-month extension to review Jerrie’s file before denying my request.

The Status of ZRRIFLE Leading into November 22, 1963

By the end of the summer leading into the assassination, Oswald had affiliated himself with Castro through a series of public spectacles culminating in his arrest. The press would discover his mugshot on the heels of learning his rifle was found at the scene, a firearm that he had previously used to attack a right-wing extremist. Oswald’s encounter with Kostikov would remain hidden in the agency’s files, to be emphasized at the CIA’s choosing. The ZRRIFLE architects now had tremendous control over Oswald’s Russian narrative, but his Castro support would be the prominent storyline.

Jerrie, for her part, had mutated from media darling to unstable outsider with a beef against America. President Kennedy personally rebuffed her on a cause she was willing to die for; she’d met with the Russians, offered to fly with them, and said she preferred their system. Her contacts with the Russians and with Kostikov were likely to have been surveilled and would be held within the agency’s files. Had Jerrie inquired about travel to the Soviet Union, she would have done so into a web of CIA surveillance.

June Cobb was distinguished from Jerrie by news reports and photos that she’d planted herself. The Jack Anderson article and her misleading congressional testimony painted her as a shadowy figure and former Castro secretary, steeped in intelligence and a soldier of fortune. On the day of the assassination, she was sleeping with a suspected KGB spy, and her file warned she was vulnerable to Russian recruitment. June Cobb was well positioned to completely disappear.

But the most tantalizing bit of evidence has to be the final book Oswald took out of the library. Why did he borrow The Shark and the Sardines, with its photo of June Cobb on the cover, a book that he had not yet returned on the day of the murder? Who was the woman shown on that book, and was she being set up as a collaborator of Oswald’s? And a final question that will forever haunt me: Why did Lee Harvey Oswald name his first baby June?

Building ZRRIFLE’s cover had taken two years.

INTERLUDE 9

The Frugal Millionaire

There were so many contradictions between who Jerrie claimed to be and who she was, it was hard to reconcile her legend with the woman I’d come to know. Central to her lore was her decision to leave civilization for a life serving the tribes of the Amazon jungle, a choice she described in her second autobiography as occurring in 1963. She was honored with a Nobel Peace Prize nomination for this work, yet on a monthlong trip we took across the Atlantic, she didn’t mention her beloved Indigenous natives once.

Never in any of our talks did she speak about an Indigenous person by name. She always referred to them broadly as “the Indigenous.” When I was interviewing her for the space film, she brought up her Amazon work frequently but never with any specificity. There was never a visceral story of a rescue, no detailed discussion of what people’s needs were, and no emotional connection to any individual or tribe. This was in sharp contrast to the commanding detail she brought to other topics, like narcotics trafficking and women’s aviation in World War II. It was difficult for me to develop a picture of what her life had been like in the Amazon jungle because her stories had no texture, no details, and no personal investment. Eventually, she just stopped talking about it at all.

In 1969 she had formed the Jerrie Cobb Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, to support her jungle work, and from that point forward, she conveyed through her newsletters and public appearances that she was living in South America full time. When I met her in 2008, she told me she was still living in the jungle and that I could reach her only when she was back in the United States to resupply. Soon after I confronted her about being June, she said she was taking a hiatus from South America on doctor’s orders. But by that time, I suspected she’d been out of the jungle for decades and was just telling me she was in the rainforest when she chose to disappear.

I suspect the jungle was never Jerrie’s primary residence. Even during her peak Amazon years, she maintained homes along the Florida coast, making frequent appearances at domestic air races, fundraisers, and award dinners. She certainly flew numerous extended expeditions to the rainforest, often with American friends in tow who were paying for her fuel. Based on my exhaustive review of her memorabilia and our many conversations, I believe she made regular and sometimes lengthy visits to South America from the late 1960s to the early ’80s, for a twelve-to-fifteen-year span.

After that, she began a nomadic lifestyle, traveling the world by cruise ship. At least once during what should have been her Amazon apex, she actually spent a year circumnavigating the globe by sea. In 1988, at age fifty-seven, she sold her Britten-Norman Islander bush plane, after which I’ve found nothing, pictorial or otherwise, to confirm her claim that she continued her aviation work in the jungle. Even during her peak Amazon years, she was often in the United States, staying at her Texas and Florida properties. She became adept at buying and flipping retirement cottages.

The one constant between the Jerrie of the jungle and the Jerrie I’d come to know was her frugality. She insisted on micromanaging our trips, and if it was a cruise, she strategized for the best deal using her hundreds of points from her lifetime of cruising. If it was a road trip, she insisted we locate the cheapest hotel in the region. Many a trip was ruined when we approached a town after a long drive, stopping at three or four places, only to find nothing priced to her liking.

As she got older, her stamina wasn’t up to the laborious quest for savings, and she was prone to melting down when reality didn’t match her expectations. She’d even threaten to sleep in the car rather than pay the going rate, but at her age, she was in no shape to follow through. Eventually, she’d break down, pull out her platinum American Express card, and pay for her portion. On a few occasions, I paid the bill to end the onslaught, but she was still furious at me for “overpaying.”

She claimed she had no money, but when she needed it, it was there. She frequently changed cars, buying a new and smarter model and then customizing it with her dancing frog logo on the side. In pictures from her Amazon years, I saw the same dancing frog customized onto the tail of all her planes. Even when she was in her late eighties, she still went to the expense of detailing the happy frog on every car she bought.

Her home was spartan and had the feel of a vacation cottage, not a full-time residence. She never used air conditioning, and in the heat of summer, it was stifling. Her houses were always clean and well maintained, but the furnishings were exceptionally modest. Jerrie had very little to show for her incredible world travels, but for a few cruising snapshots and kitschy trinkets. There was nothing to separate her home from those of thousands of other retirees, except that hers looked a lot less lived in.

Her bookshelves were equally sparse, except for the one topic that bewitched her: the Mayan and Incan gold treasures, plundered by those who had annihilated their civilizations. These gloriously handcrafted figurines and jewelry are unimaginatively referred to as pre-Columbian gold by those who collect it. Jerrie’s obsessive focus on these valuables seemed out of character, yet her bookshelves overflowed with glossy lookbooks, most of which flopped open to the creased, well-worn page of a favorite piece.

Secreted within one book, I found a draft of an essay written by Jerrie herself for the Museo del Oro in Bogotá. It recounted the origins of specific pieces and the beliefs from which they sprang. The essay may have been a submission of captions for artifacts the museum was planning to display. From her command of the topic and the confidence with which she wrote, I concluded that Jerrie was an expert on pre-Columbian gold and the civilizations that had molded it. Finally, I’d unearthed her connection to the Indigenous.

Eventually, the disconnect between Jerrie’s travel-at-will lifestyle and her claim of having no money piqued my interest in the source of her income. Her charitable foundation appeared to be mostly inactive, and her eBay sales of space memorabilia was the only income I saw. But surely those scattered items couldn’t support her retirement cottage, up-to-date iPhone, and exotic world travels.

So one day when I was searching to see if she was selling any higher-ticket space items, I stumbled onto her true source of wealth—which, like everything else about Jerrie, was hiding in plain sight. She had amassed a fortune in pre-Columbian gold, from where I don’t know, and she’d been selling it for decades as her primary means of support.

The first sale I found was dated May 15, 2015, where she’d listed hundreds of items through a massive auction house in Dallas. Her Jerrie Cobb Foundation was the beneficiary of the sale, which included some bone and stone carvings but mostly pre-Columbian gold: frog necklaces, gold birds, gold earrings, gold nose rings, gold sun icons, gold everything. I quickly tabulated the asking prices and saw her lot was expected to bring in close to a quarter-million dollars.

As I surfed the internet cramming on pre-Columbian gold, I discovered another auction of items remarkably similar to Jerrie’s in Dallas. This higher-priced auction was hosted by Sotheby’s in New York and was set to go off on the same day as Jerrie’s sale. To my beginner’s eye, several pieces at Sotheby’s looked like they could be a continuation of Jerrie’s other collection, only this was the good stuff. Jerrie’s Dallas items were going for $1,000 to $5,000 apiece. The Sotheby’s items were selling in the $50,000 to $100,000 range.

There were a few reasons I suspected this Sotheby’s lot could be Jerrie’s, too. Not only were the sales held on the same day, but both collections were heavy on gold birds and gold frogs, two animals that I knew were her totems. But beyond that, there was one spectacular piece at Sotheby’s that cemented my certainty it was hers: the Peruvian gold pre-Columbian blowgun.

I take back my comment that she told no visceral stories from her jungle days, because she did tell me one. It was her story about killing monkeys with an Indigenous blowgun. She radiated pride when she explained that she had been allowed to join the men on hunting expeditions while the women stayed back at the camp. I vividly remember her pantomiming for me how to shoot a monkey. She acted it out with such relish, first carefully aiming, then using a swift, powerful exhale to propel the dart. It was shocking. It also wasn’t lost on me that June Cobb’s CIA code name was an homage to a deadly dart poison. Now I’d found a gold weapon that looked like a blowgun for sale on the same day as Jerrie’s other sale. I scheduled a trip to Sotheby’s to investigate.

The people who wait on you in the Sotheby’s antiquities department are a bit on the snooty side. I asked to see the weapon, and a woman who was a renowned expert on pre-Columbian gold got the key and opened the case for me. I told her I was interested in the “provenance” of the piece, a word I’d never used before in an actual conversation. She explained that the piece had the correct pedigree, and I needn’t worry about its authenticity. She volunteered that the weapon sourced back into the collection of John Wise, who’d established a prominent collection dating back to 1963. But she wouldn’t give me the name of the current seller because that person wished to remain anonymous.

I countered by pointing out that John Wise’s name had been attached to a few fraudulent pieces that were sold to a Dallas museum, so the prospective buyer couldn’t be too careful, a factoid I regurgitated from my internet cramming. I handled the gun, which was exceptionally light, and while I didn’t say so, I was surprised by how little gold heft there was to a piece that was expected to approach six figures. I decided not to mortgage my house to buy the gun.

Much later I learned I’d embarrassed myself further at Sotheby’s, not understanding that what I thought was a blowgun was actually its close cousin, an atlatl, which propels a poison dart in a throwing motion, while looking for all the world like a blowgun. The atlatl was also a favored weapon of the Indigenous tribes Jerrie served.

I left my business card with Sotheby’s and departed without getting much information. But I couldn’t help wondering how June Cobb would have handled the assignment. I decided she would have concocted an alias. By handing over my business card, I knew that, if this was Jerrie’s collection, she’d be hearing from Sotheby’s. That worried me a bit because I’d always gone to her first with my questions, and she always knew what I was looking into, at least broadly. She knew very directly of my interest in June Cobb, Dallas, and the day Kennedy died.

Somehow her owning this fortune in pre-Columbian gold seemed more sensitive and protected. She’d gone to great lengths to claim she lived hand to mouth on small donations to her foundation, a ruse she maintained with me privately but also in public. That story allowed no room for a million-dollar windfall of Incan treasure.

There was, however, a windfall in QJWIN’s story. When the CIA let the assassin go in April 1964, QJWIN was paid a sizable severance. Throughout the second half of ZRRIFLE, QJWIN had been trying to set up an art dealership as a part of their cover, with little success. Seventeen months and $18,000 later, QJWIN was allowed to keep the money that the CIA had paid for the cover—or more precisely, QJWIN was allowed to reap the profits from the art that ZRRIFLE had paid for.

As QJWIN’s severance was being arranged, Luxembourg explained to headquarters that QJWIN now had an agreement to open a shop in March 1964 in “Cologne,” where the art would be displayed and sold on a commission basis. Once that arrangement was in place, QJWIN was terminated, but the agent was still allowed to profit from the sale of the art. QJWIN’s $18,000 in expenses for the venture equals about $180,000 today, but the profits from the art could have been a far greater amount.

Based on my exhaustive review of Jerrie’s books and possessions, her involvement in pre-Columbian gold appears to date back to an exhibition held in Los Angeles in March 1964 titled Gold Before Columbus. John Wise had numerous pieces in that exhibit, as did other big-name collectors. In Jerrie’s memorabilia, I found a well-worn program from this exhibition, the type of lookbook you pick up when you are in attendance or have a personal interest in the event. This magazine-style program was the oldest publication in her pre-Columbian gold book collection. Her second oldest was a coffee-table glossy published a year later, which fell open to creased pages of spectacular gold frogs and birds, similar to ones I knew she’d owned.

After my visit to Sotheby’s, I next saw Jerrie when I stopped at her home on my way back from Cuba. This was when I was traveling with my partner, Michele, and Jerrie told us she knew Fidel Castro. Some of this story I’ve told you before, but there was more to this visit than our discussions of Cuba and Castro.

Not long after welcoming us into her home, Jerrie announced that she was a pre-Columbian gold consultant for Sotheby’s antiquities department in New York. That comment came out of left field since I’d never mentioned that I knew anything about her pre-Columbian gold collection, or that I’d recently visited Sotheby’s.

I knew she was prompting me to disclose that I’d been there, but for whatever reason, and uncharacteristically, I chose not to go into it. Previously I’d always been transparent with her about my various interests—in her life story, her identity conflation with June Cobb, or my suspicions about Kennedy’s murder. I can’t explain why this felt different, but I instinctively knew it was. Unsure what to say about her windfall of gold treasure, I simply opted to say nothing.

As we wrapped up the awkward Sotheby’s topic, we transitioned into the living room and settled in for another round of conversation. She asked if Michele and I would be leaving in the morning because, as usual, she hoped I’d stay longer. I confirmed that we would be heading out rather early.

Then after a beat, she leaned in, looked me in the eye, and asked:

What hospital do you go to?

She was smiling.

I felt a zing of electricity run through my entire body. I asked her what she meant.

She said she wanted to know what local hospital I went to in my hometown. This was completely out of the blue. She was still smiling.

I tried to make sure my face wasn’t registering anything as I explained there were three hospitals in Lancaster, but that in my adult life, I hadn’t been in the hospital much. But if I ever had to go, I would probably go to the largest, Lancaster General Hospital, the one where I was born.

Michele had heard the hospital question, too. We were both freaked out but couldn’t discuss it until we were alone in our sleeping bags on their front porch, and then only through whisperings and hand signals. I had always known that pursuing this story held risks, but it was hard to imagine that her comment could be anything other than a warning.

The next day we were awake before dawn and ready to go. Everything seemed superficially okay as Jerrie and Ruth brought out our breakfast—a small bowl of strawberries with milk and black coffee. My bowl of strawberries and coffee were handed to me very specifically. Usually breakfast was in their kitchen, not in their living room, and usually the bowls weren’t delivered. Normally, they didn’t serve fresh fruit, but, rather, Jerrie would cook eggs.

I absolutely was afraid to eat it. But I’d been afraid many times in the eight years up to this point. Getting as much information as I could in this cat-and-mouse game had required some sort of compartmentalized trust, and it seemed like we’d settled into an unspoken agreement. I worried that my trip to Sotheby’s had taken me out-of-bounds. I also worried that refusing food would be seen as yet another breach.

We had our breakfast and promptly left. As I was backing out of her driveway, Jerrie was waving her usual wistful goodbye from the walkway. She was emotional that I was leaving, and her eyes teared up, as they often would at our partings. My jeep top was down, and as I was about to accelerate away from their cottage, I heard Jerrie speak too loudly to Ruth. “Good riddance,” she spewed with perceptible disdain amid the tears. She was still waving, but her face had curdled with disgust.

Michele had witnessed everything I had, including the hospital warning, but from the passenger’s seat, she missed the parting comment. On the drive home, we spent hours parsing every nuance of the visit, and we counted our lucky stars to have gotten out of there. Was the hospital comment a warning, and if so, what did it mean? Was it safe to continue my contacts with her? Was she too old to do us harm? Why was Sotheby’s such a big deal, after all the other topics we’d tackled?

Thirty-six hours later we reached Lancaster. I pulled into my driveway, went into the house, flopped on the bed, and within fifteen minutes, I was trembling violently. A fever had rapidly set in. I wasn’t home ninety minutes before I was so ill with violent vomiting and loss of bowel control that Michele and I were on our way to the same hospital that Jerrie had just asked me about. I’ve never been so sick in my life.

Two days later I was released, diagnosed with shigella, a food poisoning often caused by contaminated water. I’d just been to Cuba, but on a group trip eating the same things as my ten traveling companions. None of them became violently ill. The onset of my illness was three days after my return flight from Havana, and shigella can have an onset of twelve to ninety-six hours. Considering I was sixty hours out of Cuba and thirty-six hours from Jerrie’s when I was stricken, it was impossible to determine exactly where I came into contact with the contamination.

I’d known Jerrie for two years before discovering June. I’d established a friendship with her prior to that discovery, and I’d maintained my relationship with her strategically ever since. Clearly, she was no stranger to strategy, and just as clearly, she was being highly strategic with me. Were we now at cross-purposes, or did she share my intent of getting her deeper story out?

While I suspected the latter, her wishes no longer had any bearing on my decisions regarding this story. Ethically, the importance of this story to history now overrode all other concerns. Furthermore, she had welcomed me into her life as her biographer, and she was forewarned when I first met her that I would only tell the truth.

Jerrie Cobb was a millionaire who posed as a person who had nothing. Jerrie assumed the identity of others to achieve her own objectives. Jerrie’s charitable foundation was a front for her personal expenses and cruise ship lifestyle. Jerrie was a thrill seeker, a high-stakes gambler, and a con. I learned more from an afternoon on Wikipedia about tribes in the Amazon than I had learned from her in ten years of conversation.

Jerrie Cobb never cared a whit about going into space. She was an extremely intelligent, well-read, well-educated, and yes, deeply fascinating person. Jerrie Cobb completely lacked empathy.

Jerrie Cobb was also an excellent marksman. And not just with a blowgun.

TEN

The Babushka

10.1 THE MAGIC BUTTON

“A very sensitive and unusual technique of assassination.”

—William Harvey

This book started with my drive to confront Jerrie about being June and her admission that she flew into Redbird Airport on the day Kennedy died. Obviously, I didn’t believe aspects of her story. Reporters don’t sit out on a tarmac, desperately trying to leave Dallas, after hearing the president was shot.

What Jerrie described sounded, for all the world, like a getaway flight, and the anxiety it triggered in her seemed like the anxiety accompanying an escape. When I looked for her in the film of Dealey Plaza, I discovered the Babushka, a puzzle piece with the contours to fit the hole in Jerrie’s story, the parts I disbelieved.

Jerrie flew into Redbird with a news crew and then flew out again under duress: her flights in and out were the parts that I believed. It was her sitting all day at Redbird that made no sense. Was the Babushka the missing piece of Jerrie’s story?

I started tabulating similarities. Babushka was strong and athletic, seemed to have had a blond ponytail, and was holding a sizable camera. Jerrie was blond and athletic, had a ponytail, and said she went to Dallas with a camera crew from Life. The Babushka was dressed in a way that concealed her and that inspired a Russian nickname. Blaming the Soviets was part of the plan.

I’ve presented extensive evidence that Jerrie borrowed the name “June Cobb” for her work in espionage. I’ve shown that June and her case officer were answering to William Harvey, architect of the assassination program. Government documents show June personally making a delivery to the assassin whom the CIA mobilized against Castro at the same time he received the agency’s poison. I’ve laid out more evidence that June was QJWIN than has ever been presented for any other contender for that code name, unless you believe the official story of the all-too-obvious “Jose Mankel.” And I’ve shown that QJWIN was Arnold Silver’s top choice for “personal spot action.”

That’s why I was so troubled when I came across paperwork from Jerrie’s astronaut tests, in which a navy doctor described her as a “marksman.” The doctors at Pensacola Naval Base were military men, and as such, they would be unlikely to misapply the term. That comment resides in a psychiatric report listing Jerrie’s hobbies, but if she’d simply told the doctor she enjoyed hunting and was a good shot, you wouldn’t think he’d have listed her as a “marksman.” A marksman is a person with the ability to accurately shoot a high-value target from long range with a firearm. The Pensacola doctors were right. Jerrie was a marksman.

In Woman into Space, Jerrie wrote about her upbringing around firearms and how she accompanied her father, a national-caliber sharpshooter, to out-of-town competitions. In her private photo collection, there were numerous snapshots of her posing with deer she bagged on expeditions with her father. While that background certainly suggests she was comfortable and experienced with firearms, none of it qualifies her as a marksman.

So one evening in our travels, over drinks, I brought up that my father enjoyed pheasant hunting and had been the best shot in his circle. I also volunteered that I tried hunting with him but was a terrible shot. She countered that she was an excellent shot, and that when her skills were tested at the prestigious Gun Club at the Greenbrier, she scored the best tally ever recorded there by a woman. That level of proficiency would be commensurate with a marksman.

I confirmed through news reports and photos that Jerrie stayed at the Greenbrier in West Virginia on September 9, 1961. Silver and Harvey were considering QJWIN for personal spot action at that time.

Tracking the Babushka

I wanted to understand the Babushka’s movements on Dealey Plaza, and the first step in any reconstruction was to obtain all the available imagery. The Babushka appears in many photos and movies taken on the plaza, but the backbone of my analysis hinged on the three motion pictures documenting her movements during the fatal sequence.

At least three shots were fired at the president’s motorcade that day, and according to many witnesses and researchers, probably more. Kennedy’s limousine was almost out of Dallas when it made the left turn onto Elm Street headed toward the freeway. Seconds after that turn, the first shot rang out, originating from Oswald’s sniper’s nest and missing the president completely. One’s aim doesn’t usually improve on subsequent shots as the target drives away, but the investigation concluded that Oswald’s aim did just that.

The total number of shots is hotly debated, but it’s generally believed the president was hit in the throat by the second shot from the sniper’s nest, after which the limousine inexplicably slowed down. Then, while the limousine was creeping along slowly, a final bullet struck the president in the head, sealing his fate in that instant. Three spent shells were found on the floor in the sniper’s nest, along with Oswald’s rifle.

A Dictabelt recording made from an open police microphone recorded a total of four shots, with two in rapid succession near the moment of the fatal headshot. While the Dictabelt analysis has been contested, as has almost all the evidence in this case, that observation was seconded by witnesses who heard a similar pattern. In 1978 the House Select Committee on Assassinations gave the acoustic evidence so much weight, it concluded the killing was the result of a conspiracy and not a single shooter. While some have differed with that conclusion, everyone agrees that the bullet that struck Kennedy in the head delivered the fatal blow to the already wounded president.

Five bystanders were in the president’s vicinity when the fatal shot arrived, and all were watching from the south side of Elm Street. Jean Hill and Mary Moorman were the closest, standing curbside just behind the president’s limo. Next were Charles Brehm and his five-year-old son, twenty-five feet behind the car and directly at the curb. Two steps behind them and peering over their shoulder was the Babushka, thirty-three feet away from Kennedy when the fatal shot arrived.

FIGURE 10A. The frame of the Muchmore film at the moment of the fatal shot.

Three home movies captured the Babushka during the fatal sequence: the Bronson film, which recorded her from behind and at great distance; the Zapruder film, which panned past her as it followed the president’s car; and the Muchmore film, which documented the Babushka and the fatal blow in the same tightly composed frame. Marie Muchmore’s film is by far the most important for our purposes, since the three-second clip shows what the Babushka was doing during the fatal strike.

I ran Muchmore’s film through a stabilization program to steady the shaky handheld camerawork and get a better look at how the Babushka was moving. Other researchers have stabilized the assassination films by keying in on the president, to examine the ballistic damage. I stabilized this film by keying in on the Babushka, locking her down as the central focus to isolate her actions.

What the Stabilized Muchmore Film Revealed

The Babushka’s stance was similar to a stance I would use as a professional filmmaker. Her legs were a shoulder-width apart, with her right foot slightly ahead of her left as the car approached. She never adjusted her feet, so as the president moved down Elm, he eventually arrived into a configuration where she was perfectly squared up to him. That was the moment he was hit by the fatal shot.

A perfectly squared stance when taking aim at a target with a pistol is the stance favored by pistol marksmen. It’s called the “isosceles stance,” but traditionally, the shooter would have their arms extended, forming a triangle between the feet and gun. The Babushka held her camera closer to her face, but her feet were in the isosceles position.

The Babushka gripped her camera with her right hand lower on the unit and her left on top for stabilization. This is how I would hold a pistol-grip movie camera, but few amateurs do, as evidenced by the shaky footage taken by everyone else on Dealey Plaza. When shooting with a scoped pistol held closer to the face, some shooters will stabilize the gun similarly, with their left hand atop the scope, for better aim and to reduce kickback. This is consistent with the Babushka’s posture.

The Babushka positioned herself several yards behind the curb, which is an odd choice for anyone filming the president. Even amateurs know to step up for a closer image, but instead, she stood in back of Charles Brehm, a bulky army veteran. No photographer, amateur or otherwise, would have chosen this spot when taking three steps forward would have put them in perfect position. If she was interested in concealing herself, however, her positioning makes sense. Zapruder was filming from across the street, and Brehm partially blocked his view of her.

But it’s her aim that is the most troubling. When Muchmore’s fatal sequence begins, the president’s car is approaching the Babushka from her right, and it is only a second away from passing in front of her. Kennedy is in the back of the vehicle, so if she was interested in filming him, she should have been aiming sharply to her right. Maybe for the first frame of the clip, Babushka was aiming slightly to her right, but not for long. Keep in mind, she had positioned herself in back of Brehm, so as the motorcade passed in front of her, Brehm would partially obstruct her view.

From a lifetime of filming, I can tell you that when you are filming something moving along the road in front of you and a brief obstruction enters your frame, you simply pan right through it. I have done this a million times. You can’t even see the obstacle until it enters your frame, so you don’t anticipate it. Furthermore, the footage of the car coming toward you is the best shot, so you hold on to that good image until the very end. This will be the angle where you will see Jackie and the president’s faces close up. It’s the image you came here for.

You certainly don’t swing away from that shot and set up your aim at a point in space into which the back of the president’s head will soon arrive. Yet that is exactly what the Babushka did. And she stayed there. Then when the motorcade inexplicably slowed down in front of her, at what appears to be the moment when the president enters her frame, his head explodes. The material from his skull sprayed away from her on impact but was driven back as the convertible moved into the wind, with some material landing on the trunk.

The Babushka’s angle on the president was predominantly a rearward one, and as such, it wasn’t too far off the angle taken by the rifleman in the Book Depository. The Bronson film shows the motorcade going downhill as it drifted away from her, making the Babushka’s shot not only a rearward one but also one from slightly above. The Dictabelt recording suggests four shots were fired, with three paced a few seconds apart, and the third and fourth shots in rapid succession. Did the rifleman take three shots, while the Babushka took one, which was intended to be sonically and ballistically disguised by the third shot from the rifleman?

FIGURE 10B. A still frame from the Bronson film showing the motorcade rolling downhill from the Babushka.

A shot from the grassy knoll, which is often proposed as the site of an additional gunman, is nowhere near as elegant a solution as would be a shot from the Babushka. Her angle simulated the rifleman’s, while a knoll shot would have been ninety degrees off, a very different angle that would have left noticeably different damage. Shooting from the grassy knoll would have been best accomplished with a long gun, which would be difficult to conceal while entering and exiting the plaza. As the Babushka Lady has proved, no one bothers to look for a mysterious camera woman ten yards from the fatal blow.

A knoll shooter would have fired across toward the first lady and into scattered bystanders, potentially revealing the second shooter if anyone but Kennedy had been hit. Babushka was shooting into the grassy knoll where there were no bystanders, a perfect ballistic backstop. The knoll shooter would have had trouble seeing if the president was fatally hit by the initial shots, but the Babushka could ascertain the situation for herself. She was thirty-three feet from the target as it drifted away, a much easier shot than panning sideways, as would have been required from the knoll.

If it was possible to conceal a gun inside a camera, then Babushka was in the best position in all of Dealey Plaza from which to shoot the president and replicate the angle of the rifle. So was a camera-gun a possibility in 1963? And could a camera-gun have been the “sensitive and unusual technique of assassination” that William Harvey ordered for ZRRIFLE and called the Magic Button?

A Scoped Pistol Concealed Inside a Camera

By 1963, disguised guns had been in use for over a century. Guns in pens, watches, walking canes, wallets, and lipstick—all had been developed. This was not a new concept, nor was it beyond the reach of 1963 technology. There is no question that a pistol could be housed in a Super 8 camera, a Bolex 16mm, or a Sears Tower camera, all of which have been suggested as the Babushka’s camera system.

By the early 1960s, hobbyists were experimenting with telescopic pistols for targeting small game, and according to Field and Stream magazine, a weekend shooter using one could tag a rabbit at fifty yards. The Babushka was no more than twelve yards from Kennedy. To this day, the Secret Service tests cameras to make sure they don’t conceal a weapon before anyone gains access to the president. There could be no better place to conceal a pistol than in a camera, which a person would have every reason to be aiming at the president at any given time.

William Harvey named his new technology the Magic Button. Magic is, in essence, an illusion involving a misdirection to lure the eye away from where the trick would be revealed. Was ZRRIFLE named for the distraction? If so, Harvey’s illusion held up for sixty years.

10.2 AFTER THE SHOTS

To my eye, three things made the Babushka stand out from other onlookers on Dealey Plaza:

She was alone and spoke to no one.

Her identity was concealed.

She was not afraid.

After the president was shot, the Babushka stood tall while everyone around her hit the dirt. Apparently, she had no concern that any additional shots would strike her. Her tranquil demeanor in the face of the killing landed her in a minority of one. She calmly pulled down her sunglasses and gazed first at Zapruder, then at the Book Depository. Silver’s assessment—“cool-headed, has guts”—comes to mind.

After that, where did she go? The internet is loaded with disinformation. Pictures and composites of the Babushka abound, often featuring the wrong female bystander. She’s famous for being a curiosity and a mystery, but for the most part, she’s considered a benign one. Few have suggested she could have culpability in the crime.

FIGURE 10C. The Babushka stands tall seconds after the shots (Wilma Bond photo no. 4).

Years later several women, including Beverly Oliver, an employee of Jack Ruby’s, came forward with shaky stories claiming they were the Babushka. None were able to produce her footage, and none convinced skeptics that they were the real McCoy. The Babushka walked off Dealey Plaza and into historical trivia, making the occasional appearance on lists of the greatest mysteries of all time.

I put my experience editing movies to work on charting the Babushka’s movements after the shots. By gathering all the films of the assassination and compositing them with a multicam effect, I created a time-contiguous sequence where you can watch every angle of the assassination and its aftermath simultaneously. The resulting video displays different clips running in boxes on the same screen, giving the effect of watching numerous security cameras, with the added benefit that you are able to stop, zoom in, or scrub back and forth to compare details. Still photos were then evaluated for where they fit into the sequence, to add additional views.

What the Multicam Sequence Revealed

It’s amazing how much of the vital action in the assassination and its aftermath occurred in the first two minutes. This was a very fast-moving event, much faster than the impression given by looking at still pictures and individual movies.

Immediately after the fatal shot, bystanders around the Babushka dove to the ground and scampered behind her, distancing themselves from the curb. That left her standing like a brave mama bear surrounded by cubs. This fallen grouping included combat veteran Charles Brehm, Jean Hill, and Mary Moorman. The Babushka moved very little, other than to replace her sunglasses and watch the scene unfold. She was particularly interested in something in the direction of the Book Depository.

Hill, the woman in the red coat who was with Moorman, told conflicting stories over the years, including her version to the Warren Commission that immediately after Kennedy’s car passed by, she ran into the street. The visual record shows that she hit the dirt along with Moorman, and the fallen group stayed down for thirty to forty-five seconds.

About a minute after the fatal shot, Hill was up again and standing to the right of the Babushka, while both women were looking across the street. Hill’s pal Moorman was now several feet behind them, separated by another bystander. This is an interesting configuration considering what happened next.

Mark Bell, the cameraman who filmed Hill and Babushka standing together, stopped his camera and restarted it moments later. Based on my multicam composite video, I estimate that about forty seconds passed while his camera was off. When he resumed filming, Hill was almost all the way up the stairs on the grassy knoll, exiting Dealey Plaza into the parking area, followed by the Babushka. Bell then panned to the right, revealing that Moorman was alone on the plaza. A photo taken by Jay Skaggs moments later corroborates that Babushka and Hill left and that Moorman was now standing there alone.

Hill and Babushka entered the parking area no more than two and a half minutes after the fatal shot.

More Babushkas Arrive

Not long after the Babushka left, a heavier, older woman dressed similarly crossed Elm Street toward the grassy knoll. This woman is often mistaken for the Babushka, but she doesn’t have a camera bag and has darker hair. She is clearly not the original. She is the first in a series of look-alikes who appeared on Elm Street after Hill and the Babushka walked away.

I estimate that about ten minutes elapsed before yet another Babushka arrived, and she might be the original returning. During that ten-minute gap, the scene had evolved. The rest of the motorcade snaked its way through the plaza, and regular traffic had resumed. A group of onlookers clustered on the northern side of Elm. It was on the edge of this crowd that the identical Babushka arrived. She was wearing a brown trench coat and a pink headscarf, with a camera bag, and she was clutching a camera out in the open. She was captured in a series of pictures taken by Willie Allen, who ran down to the plaza from a newspaper office after hearing news of the killing.

It’s possible that the Babushka lingered in the parking area or walked to the Book Depository before returning to the plaza, although there are no images of her doing so. To my eye, the woman Allen photographed has subtle differences from the original, including the fact that the camera she’s holding doesn’t seem to match the way the original Babushka was filming. While I’m not fully convinced that this Babushka is the original, in many ways, it doesn’t matter. The Babushka either left Dealey Plaza by way of the parking area, two minutes after the fatal shot, or she milled about the scene and left fifteen minutes later.

Either way, if Babushka left Dealey Plaza and drove to Redbird Airport, she would have made that trip in less than twenty minutes. I made the same drive in precisely sixteen.

10.3 EGRESS

When the rifle shots rang out, pigeons fluttered away from the Texas School Book Depository windows, catching the eye of a motorcycle cop in the presidential motorcade. Officer Marrion Baker immediately accelerated toward the front door and ran into the building with his pistol drawn. A manager joined him on a foot rush up the stairwell, where, on the second floor, they spotted Oswald. Baker told the Warren Commission that he “hollered at him” to “come here.” Ninety seconds after firing at the president, Oswald came face to face with the possibility of an immediate arrest.

The manager vouched for Oswald, ending the quick exchange. Baker bolted up the stairs toward the sniper’s nest while Oswald continued his walk-away exit, first buying a Coke in the lunchroom and then heading out the front door. The Warren Commission estimated that he left the building three minutes after the fatal shot.

Oswald turned down Elm Street and headed away from Dealey Plaza. The Babushka had been glancing toward the front door of the Book Depository during the first minute or so, but by the time he exited, she was on her way to the parking area and no longer looking at the door. The unexpected encounter with Baker may have thrown off Oswald’s timeline.

A single man walking away from the plaza would have drawn suspicion, which is why Oswald’s next move was sheer brilliance. Four blocks from Dealey Plaza on Elm, he hopped a bus headed back toward the plaza. The last place police would think to search was a bus that originated elsewhere.

Oswald should have stayed there. Instead, he got antsy. After creeping along for a block in traffic, he asked the driver for a transfer ticket and exited. That ticket would allow him to pick up a different bus at a bus stop or to flag one on a route where buses were allowed to stop for pedestrians. Redbird Airport was on a flaggable bus route, so Oswald’s ticket was valid to get him to Redbird.

With the ticket in hand, Oswald first tried another bus stop. Unfortunately, it was between buses, so he jumped into a taxi and headed to his rooming house just outside town. There he put on a dark jacket, altering his description slightly, and picked up his pistol. This was twenty-five minutes after the killing. If the Babushka had exited into the parking lot and headed directly to Redbird Airport, she would be there by now.

Meanwhile, a priest was called to Parkland Hospital to read the last rites to President Kennedy. He was pronounced dead at one p.m. A vague description of Oswald, from Baker’s sighting, was now running over police radios. Oswald briskly left the rooming house on foot, heading in the direction of yet another bus stop.

Officer J. D. Tippit, a policeman patrolling the area near the rooming house, had heard that description four times in the past fifteen minutes when he saw Oswald walking alone. Tippit pulled over and asked Oswald to approach the car. After a brief exchange through the passenger window, Tippit opened his door to walk around the car, but before he made it past the bumper, Oswald shot him four times.

Once again Oswald tried for a brisk walk-away exit, but not before making eye contact with a female pedestrian who’d just seen him shoot the policeman in broad daylight. He broke into a run. If his goal was to get to the airport, he should have been there by now. It was one-fifteen p.m., forty-five minutes after the shooting.

That day Mary Ferrell, who would later become a respected assassination historian, was at her home in Dallas, glued to the unfolding news. She was listening to radio reports on the president’s condition when she heard an announcement that there was an ongoing development out at Redbird Airport. A twin-engine plane was revving its engines but not taking off. Residents nearby had called in the disturbance because they were worried that the strange plane might be linked to the assassination. And maybe it was.

That plane’s activity on the runway perfectly matches the movements of Jerrie Cobb. She was in that cockpit, awaiting her exit. Her plane’s propellers were spinning while she, too, was getting news from the radio. The pressure was building because she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to take off before the airspace was shut down. Air Force One would be wheels up any minute, and if she didn’t get airborne before then, she knew she’d miss her chance. Fifty years later that memory was so triggering, she couldn’t tell me that story without her body reliving a visceral fight-or-flight response.

At 1:38 p.m., Walter Cronkite choked back tears as he read the bulletin that the president was dead. Jerrie heard the news while she was out on the runway. Simultaneously, Oswald, who’d ducked into several businesses to avoid capture, was swarmed by Dallas police in a movie theater. But news of his arrest was not immediately released. Jerrie’s plane continued to idle.

By two p.m., Oswald was in a Dallas jail, and Kennedy’s body was en route to Air Force One. Jerrie was still waiting out on the runway, her propellers twirling and her anxiety on blast. News soon leaked that someone had been arrested for killing a policeman. Oswald was first named on the newscasts at exactly 2:43 p.m.

Jerrie told me she heard a second piece of news that “something else had happened,” after which she took off, making it out of Redbird “just before the airspace shut down.” Air Force One departed Dallas at 2:47 p.m., and its takeoff shut down the airspace. The timing of the second piece of news that Jerrie heard closely matched the timing of the announcement of Oswald’s arrest. Lyndon Johnson was minutes into his presidency when her wheels left the ground.

10.4 TO MEXICO

Jerrie didn’t tell me where her plane was headed when she left Redbird Airport, but her Aero Commander had a top speed of 265 miles per hour and could go fourteen hundred miles without refueling. Mexico City was a three-and-a-half-hour flight away, well within her range.

On the night of November 22, 1963, a private twin-engine plane arrived in Mexico City with someone who was headed to Cuba. U.S. authorities didn’t investigate the incident until a week later, when CIA headquarters sent these instructions to its Mexico City station, coded GPFLOOR, meaning it was Oswald-related:

HQS has received report that on day of President Kennedy’s assassination (22Nov) Cubana Aircraft delayed its departure Mexico City five hours from 1700 to 2200 awaiting important passenger who arrived Mexico City airport in private twin motor aircraft at 2130 hours Mexi time. Passenger transferred directly to Cubana plane without going through customs or immigration. Travelled in pilots cabin to Havana. Above from [Colombian] diplomat who passenger on same plane to Havana. Request you attempt identify and determine reason unusual actions at airport.

A private twin-engine plane had arrived in Mexico City with a passenger headed to Cuba, and from the fact that it skipped customs, we know it was a foreign arrival. A Cuban airliner awaited this plane and delayed its departure for five hours because it was expecting a passenger, who had obviously encountered a delay. The mysterious passenger then joined the pilots in the cabin and flew on to Cuba without being processed properly in Mexico. The CIA labeled the incident Oswald-related because it looked like a possible getaway path for Oswald or anyone who had assisted him.

If ZRRIFLE had a secondary objective of blaming Fidel Castro for the Kennedy assassination, a conspicuous passenger fleeing to Cuba would have been useful. If Oswald had been seen transferring onto a Cuban-government-owned plane that had delayed its departure while waiting for him, then blame could have successfully been laid at Castro’s door.

It’s compelling to look at how the dominoes might have fallen differently, had Oswald been heading to Redbird and made it there uninterrupted. He would have arrived between one and one-thirty p.m. Jerrie’s plane could have then flown to Mexico City, landing at about five p.m. The Cubana aircraft was slated to take off at five p.m. but had instructions to wait, so the mysterious passenger might still have caused a delay. Those conspicuous movements would have been noticed by witnesses, who would report it after the getaway was complete.

Events in Mexico City might have unfolded differently as well. Had Oswald boarded the flight to Havana, Elena Garro’s report of having seen Oswald cavorting with Silvia Duran and her Cuban communist friends would have been damning. Employees at the Cuban embassy, like Silvia, were the very people Oswald would have needed to orchestrate that flight. Worse yet, Castro’s intelligence services were housed in that embassy, where Oswald had made so many friends that he was apparently partying with them in his spare time.

The day after the assassination, Elena and Elenita staged an impromptu protest at the Cuban embassy, yelling “Assassins, assassins” at the Cuban employees. Had Oswald escaped after socializing with Silvia Duran, everyone would have jumped to the same conclusion. We can only imagine how Garro’s story would have been amplified in the press, becoming the centerpiece in the narrative that Oswald had been working with Cubans all along.

But Oswald didn’t make it out of Dallas that day. A chain of unforeseen events interrupted his egress. Oswald’s description went out over the police radio within the first hour, far sooner than expected, and it imprinted onto the mind of a Dallas policeman. Meanwhile, under the pressure of assuming the description was accurate, Oswald made nervous choices, tumbling into his arrest.

I doubt you’ll be surprised to learn that the Mexico City station did a poor job of investigating the passenger who transferred onto the Cuban airliner. The flight manifest was located, but it yielded no insight. Years later the House Select Committee asked the CIA to produce Mexico City station’s response to the order to investigate. The agency claimed the station didn’t respond. The conclusion that Oswald had acted alone was hardening into certainty, and leads suggesting otherwise were unwelcome and ignored.

10.5 LIFE MAGAZINE

In the world of intelligence, the fewer people who know the truth, the better. A patriot like Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren could be warned that if rumors of Soviet or Cuban involvement weren’t contained, it could lead to nuclear war, and he could be unaware of how that pressure could hinder his Warren Commission investigation. Manuel Calvillo might have sequestered the Garro women at a hotel, thinking it was for their protection, not to engineer an aspect of the plot. Journalist Jack Anderson might have run a picture of the wrong woman to conceal a CIA agent, not knowing he was hiding a future crime. The agency’s reach was expansive, and those doing its bidding were often in the dark.

Which brings us to Life magazine. Jerrie claimed that Life had chartered her plane to fly a crew to Dallas on November 22, 1963. Had questions been asked at Redbird Airport, would Life have backed up Jerrie’s story that she was flying in for them?

Jerrie and Life magazine were no strangers. Five months before the assassination, Clare Boothe Luce, wife of Time-Life mogul Henry Luce, weighed in on Life’s pages supporting Jerrie’s cause, penning a blistering op-ed, furious that the Mercury 13 had been wronged by NASA. Her article even featured a full-page portrait of battle-weary Jerrie. Ten days later, William Harvey requested CIA approval for operational contact with Clare Boothe Luce. He simultaneously asked for approval for James Zellerbach, a former ambassador to Italy, but Zellerbach was on his deathbed, so Harvey’s request was really for Boothe Luce.

William Harvey, COS Rome, asked for operational approvals on subjects [Ms. Luce and Mr. Zellerbach] to be checked…for an indeterminate period so Mr. Harvey can speak with them any time they are in Italy or he is in the US.

The agency okayed Harvey’s request for contacts with Boothe Luce, so that approval was in effect when Jerrie flew to Dallas on a flight that she claimed was chartered by a crew from Life.

Harvey’s contacts with Boothe Luce were hardly her first brushes with intelligence. According to her security file, her prior work with the agency involved serving as a donor who was underwriting covert missions. She and her husband financed a speedboat harassment campaign against Cuba, which was called off due to Kennedy’s hesitations about nuclear war. JFK’s perceived missteps on Cuba sent Clare to the opinion pages, where she voiced her concern that Kennedy was implementing a containment policy rather than ridding the hemisphere of communism. “In view of candidate Kennedy’s profound alarm about the military threat of Cuba in 1960, what are the facts which leave the President so relatively calm today [September 1962] about Castro’s present military capacity?” It was a question June Cobb might have also asked.

Whether Harvey was interested in contacting Boothe Luce for operational support, for media spin, or as a sounding board is unclear. It is also far from clear that Harvey would be fully forthcoming with Boothe Luce about any requests that he made. What is clear is that in 1963, Life magazine had a large hand in shaping America’s perception of the assassination. Contrary to Jerrie’s claim, Life had no crew covering the motorcade that day. That’s why, within hours of the killing, it dispatched an envoy to purchase amateur images that were taken on Dealey Plaza.

Life Magazine and Zapruder

As a print magazine, Life was usually interested in photos, but in Dallas, its first move was to secure the exclusive rights to the Zapruder film, while raising eyebrows at the amount they were willing to pay. Abraham Zapruder had filmed the killing from an elevated position twenty yards from the street, and after he left the plaza, a mad scramble ensued to find him and his footage. Interestingly, no such scramble ensued to track down the Babushka, who had filmed the deathblow from a more magnificent vantage point and was even more conspicuous while doing so.

The maneuvering for Zapruder’s film started before the footage was even developed. Life phoned the dressmaker at his home before he went to bed, and by dawn, the magazine was jostling with law enforcement for the first look. Life instantly bought the film for $50,000, a half-million-dollar fortune today, and took the original footage, leaving the FBI with an inferior copy.

Life then proceeded to keep Zapruder’s footage from the American public for years, publishing only a series of still frames, a sequence that artfully excised the Babushka. As was depicted in Oliver Stone’s movie JFK, Americans’ first chance to view the stunning film was in Jim Garrison’s courtroom in 1969. Of course, one had to be present in the courtroom to see it. Television audiences wouldn’t view the film until 1975, a dozen years after the assassination.

What Harvey wanted from Boothe Luce in 1963 remains a mystery, one that might be cleared up if the agency released the files they are still withholding. As for Jerrie, after taking off from Redbird that day, she entered into a period of seclusion. When she publicly resurfaced in the spring of 1965, she told the Miami Herald that she was flying regularly for Life.

10.6 TERMINATION

On November 22, 1963, an article in Jerrie’s hometown Oklahoma paper announced that she was quitting her job at Aero Commander. Her plan was to conduct aid work in the Amazon jungle, a location she chose because it was “the most remote location on earth.” From that point forward, she supposedly devoted the rest of her life to her beloved Amazon tribes, except it really didn’t happen that way. She remained closer to home for several more months, living in Florida with Jane Rieker, the Life reporter who co-wrote her autobiography, and firing off a few more letters about women in space.

Meanwhile, ZRRIFLE wound down completely. QJWIN got their pink slip in April 1964, but the windfall in artwork must have cushioned the blow. The day after QJWIN was canned, Jerrie wrote to the Mission Aviation Fellowship because she, too, was out of a job.

Well, I finally made the leap and resigned from the security of a good job to do some things I consider more important. First on the agenda is a tour around South America. I plan to buy a Cessna 170-B, 175 or 180 and make the complete circuit.

Jerrie never made that trip. Newly minted President Johnson appointed Jerrie and Jean Pearson to an FAA women’s advisory panel, and they attended their first conference that May. The new president also received a letter from Jerrie asking about her future and, again, requesting to be launched on an X-15 flight. LBJ responded warmly, assuring her, “Your special skills and qualifications can be used in other equally important ways in the service of our country.” He then offered to connect her to the Peace Corps or USAID if she wanted to pursue those options. She didn’t.

Instead, that summer she made the first of her many charitable trips to the Amazon, ferrying a Helio Courier down to Colombia with Jane Rieker. The Courier was a bush plane capable of short takeoffs and landings, and a CIA workhorse in remote jungle regions. Two months later she was back in the United States.

In October 1964, the Luxembourg chief received a cable from George Lloyd, chief of Foreign Intelligence, asking him to “round up” any documents he still had on QJWIN. When word came back that the chief had already left for a new post, headquarters told Luxembourg to destroy the cable about rounding up documents. The cables about securing QJWIN’s documents are the last real-time communications in my QJWIN/ZRRIFLE collection.

10.7 THIS JOURNEY

When I started this journey, I knew nothing about spies, I hated studying history, and I had a phobia about libraries. Ten years later I’ve become a regular at the National Archives and hold cards for dozens of far-flung libraries across the land. I’ve driven cross-country to inspect yearbooks in person rather than trust digital files on internet servers. New worlds have opened up to me that I barely knew existed. The world of covert operations is one of them. But another is the world of temperature-controlled collections housed in institutions large and small, each serving as boxes in the attic of our nation’s fading memory.

I’ve spent many a cold day inside rare book and special collections reading rooms and marveled at how an American citizen can sit, open a box, and pull out a letter written by Amelia Earhart bearing her signature. Or inspect the original CIA cable that arrived in Mexico City on the day the president died, asking if they knew anything about Oswald. Or scour the handwritten telephone logs kept by Evelyn Lincoln, President Kennedy’s secretary. And all of this is free.

As a filmmaker, I was more accustomed to meeting someone in person, reading what had already been written about them, and then conducting my own interviews. When I realized there were aspects of Jerrie’s story that could be discovered only through visiting archives, I was slow to wade into them. Sitting in a chair reading is not how I wanted to spend my day, my year, my decade. I now have my own archival library, complete with the mighty shelving system I installed to house it.

I wasn’t interested in unmasking a hero. We have too few of them as it is. No one admired Jerrie more than I did, and I had been willing to spend years of my life and significant resources to bring her story to the screen. The problem was, her story wasn’t true. My name would be forever linked to her space story if I told it, and while some of it was true, it was built on a faulty foundation. Jerrie knew from the outset that I was interested in getting at the core of her story, particularly to her emotional truth—that which drives a person. In that respect, it’s true, she has still eluded me.

My journey bifurcated when I discovered June and began researching Jerrie’s alter egos while continuing our relationship. I was never comfortable with the duplicity, but Jerrie was in her element. Still, while playing cat and mouse enticed her, a part of her was getting tired. I’ll never forget what she said while she was boxing up her memorabilia to ship it to Harvard’s Schlesinger Library:

Now, they can either prove it or disprove it. I don’t care anymore.

She was ready to let go of the charade.

I believe Jerrie was born into a family of rustic Oklahomans, former lumbermen and true cowboys. She was one of the most adventurous girls in her town and, perhaps, in all of Oklahoma. Her father saw action in World War I and, I suspect, in intelligence. Jerrie’s infatuation with Sopwith Camels, made famous by Snoopy and the Red Baron, is a nod to her father’s service. When she was in her teens, her family moved to the metropolis of Oklahoma City, where she excelled in mathematics and languages. Oklahoma City was her springboard to the world.

She could shoot and ride with the best of them, but her home life was troubled by alcoholism. The Second World War and its aftermath was her opportunity to escape it. The war’s recruiting machine reached deep into Oklahoma, where her cowgirl skills, fearlessness, and beauty—for the woman underneath had far more guile than Jerrie—caught the eye of those who knew a weapon when they saw one. Her life fractured into the compartments necessitated by tradecraft, and the more operations she touched, the more secrets she would carry.

The CIA had been established in the wake of the war, and I believe she was an early member of it. Jerrie and June were characters she nurtured throughout her lifetime of service, the tools she needed to ply her craft. She chose to retire into her most non-threatening persona, the naive girl from Oklahoma who just wanted to fly. This is my best guess at who she was. Her biography was professionally curated, so we can never know for sure.

More knowable is how intelligence agencies treated women in the Cold War era. Agents put on and tossed off identities at a rate that was dizzying to friends and foes alike. While alter egos were deployed to disorient the enemy, a certain internal disorientation was sure to follow, coupled with the lack of accountability born of a strategy so invisible. A person wielding great and deniable power will eventually develop a sense of omnipotence. After all, who can provide oversight to that which cannot be seen?

Spying in a foreign place would make one, understandably, feel they were the expert and not those in Washington. After all, if you were spying on Fidel Castro, for example, you would know who he was, what his plans were, and what made him tick. That might make you feel you should be consulted on how and when to depose him. If less-informed people ignored your views, it would be infuriating, perhaps even untenable. You had taken all the risks. Shouldn’t the reward be your own empowerment?

But women in the Cold War–era agency reaped no empowerment. They had nowhere to advance, and few would listen to their views.

“You know me better than anyone else ever has. The good and the bad,” Jerrie once told me. She was careful not to tell me the bad directly. Instead, she left clues, as a master purveyor of information would, avoiding responsibility for doing so. That is what spies do. Jerrie’s official story was that she was Jerrie Cobb, the astronaut candidate—but she was thrilled when I found June.

From the moment Jerrie told me about Redbird, I suspected she had been Oswald’s getaway pilot. She could either prove it or disprove it. She did not disprove it, and she knew I knew. Whenever I pushed too far, she defaulted to the company line, but part of her didn’t want to. In our second Redbird confrontation in Mexico, take another look at what I asked Jerrie and how she responded.

M: So, are you really going to tell me that you didn’t go into Dealey Plaza that day? Is that what you’re really going to tell me after all this?

 J: Yes.

M: Really. Because that’s very hard to believe. You had all those cameras with you in the plane, and all those reporters…and you didn’t go in?

 J: Mmm-hmm.

M: So…you didn’t pick up one of those movie cameras…and you didn’t go in there to Dealey Plaza to shoot the president?

 J: No.

M: Reeeeaaally? Because, you know, I know you very well by now, right? I mean, I’ve gotten to know you really well now. And that’s what you want to tell me? That you didn’t go into Dealey Plaza in order to shoot the president with a movie camera?

 J: Well, if you know me really well, then you don’t have to ask me that question.

But I did have to ask. Jerrie denied being June Cobb, and she denied going into Dealey Plaza that day. Her first denial came minutes after she spelled out the parameters of a CIA secrecy agreement. Spies can tell you a whole lot about their lives. They just can’t tell you what happened on operations.

INTERLUDE 10

Eclipse

Even Jerrie uttering “good riddance” and me wondering if she’d doused my food with bad water wasn’t enough to derail our strange dance. I was still lying in the hospital bed when I received her first chipper email, and I emailed back as if nothing had happened. Less than a month after her prophetic hospital query, she invited me to travel with her again. I weighed my options carefully, and after a year’s hiatus and a lot of back-and-forth, I decided to reengage.

By this time, she’d truly become frail, and I didn’t know how much time she had left. My sense of the hospital episode was that I’d been warned but not stopped and that she didn’t want to stop me. I’ll never forget the first time I traveled with her again. On our first morning, she and Ruth brought a coffee from the hotel lobby, a drink they fixed without me present. They plopped it onto the table in front of me, and I felt the weight of their gazes scrutinizing my response. I’d gamed out numerous scenarios before the trip, but truthfully I had no idea how I would respond.

I grabbed the styrofoam and took a sip without missing a beat. I was here to hold her accountable to history, and doing so was worth the risk.

On that trip, Jerrie started to talk about something that took on mythic proportions. It was a date she kept reciting, August 21, 2017, which she predicted would be the most important day of her entire life. She was planning a trip with her best friends, she said, if she lived long enough to see it. Jerrie had her sights set on totality. There was to be a total eclipse of the sun.

An eclipse is nothing if not a perfect circle. She mentioned it so often, I wondered if she was hinting for me to go but didn’t want to ask. When I feebly suggested that seeing a total eclipse might be kind of fun, she canceled her plans with her other friends, if she ever had any, and plotted our course to totality.

I’d never seen a total solar eclipse, and Jerrie had never seen one from the ground, she said. There was nothing she loved more than planning a trip, and I’ll give her credit, she dialed this one in to perfection. Gone were her concerns about costs, perhaps because she knew this trip could be her last. The plan was for us to meet up in St. Louis, stay a few nights, then drive to the home of Amelia Earhart in Atchison, Kansas. There she knew of a little park where the eclipse could be seen in all its glory from a secluded hillside that had meaning for her.

Jerrie wanted to arrive days in advance to scout out our viewing spot. And so we went, with Ruth of course, to this little park near Amelia Earhart’s home. Jerrie had outdone herself this time.

The park was an oasis on the prairie. It had a curving walkway, like the yellow brick road, made of pavers bearing the names of famous aviators and astronauts. The path meandered through an arboretum of exotic trees native to all seven continents, including trees from George Washington’s Mount Vernon and Eisenhower’s Gettysburg estate. The park was dedicated to the aviators who had made accessible every corner of the earth, and to the astronauts who strode across the moon. Jerrie’s name was etched onto a paver near the entrance. Jean Pearson’s paver rested just around the corner.

In the middle of the park was something not wholly of this earth—a tree more akin to a poem than a plant. It was a Moon Tree, raised from a seed that was hand-carried by an astronaut to the moon and back and then planted in this soil. What a glorious place from which to watch our moon pass before the sun.

From the start, this trip seemed like an ending. I had long since confronted Jerrie about everything I felt would yield results. I’d discovered her boundaries, hit her tripwires, prodded her silences, and waged a war of attrition until she’d revealed all that she ever would. It had been two years since I’d summoned the courage to revisit the topic of Redbird and had excavated all she was willing to reveal about that day. Now I was shifting to a mode of passive observation. I had no objective on this trip, except for my curiosity about her spirituality or why this eclipse was so important, two things I suspected might be one. I knew that upon my return, I would write this book, and I was aware of all that I needed to say. That and many other things pointed to this being our goodbye.

Of course, I was always hoping for one more clue, one more puzzle piece that would make it all make sense. In our many travels, we always stayed together, all three in the same room. That’s how Jerrie wanted it, crammed together in a small space doing battle. But for all that proximity, Jerrie had never, ever removed her ponytail in front of me. Throughout all the showers, the sleeping at night, the early mornings, and the daily dressing, she had carefully avoided undoing the rubber band. She kept her hair pulled tight, framing her face every second that I saw her in the exact same way.

Over these years, I’d come to understand tradecraft and what makes for a successful deception. The key is 100 percent perfect consistency. If your ponytail is your disguise, you can never be seen without it. For an agent, following procedures wasn’t a part-time thing. Your life depended on your tradecraft being followed in every instance, 100 percent.

Jerrie also never wore reading glasses. Instead, she carried a single contact lens that she inserted in one eye. She read voraciously every day and evening. One of her favorite topics was secret codes, yes, the codes used by spies, and the other was sacred geometry. This eclipse would be sacred geometry at its finest. I’d finally learned that she’d carried a pair of reading glasses with her at all times. She’d just been careful never to don them in my presence.

Another oddity was her careful covering of her neckline. Jerrie always slept in a nightshirt with a high T-shirt collar. Without fail, she made sure to change into that nightshirt in the bathroom, away from visibility. Otherwise she wasn’t overly modest, but she seemed specifically protective of her neckline. I suspected this was due to June Cobb’s well-publicized bout with leishmaniasis and the notation in June’s CIA paperwork that she had an identifying scar on her left clavicle from it.

Leishmaniasis is a tropical disease in which parasitic sandflies devour the skin, creating a horrid ulceration that’s resistant to healing. June Cobb contracted leishmaniasis on one of her early trips to the Amazon jungle, and on the brink of death, she was whisked home to a Manhattan hospital, where a famous blood disease specialist cured her. But her recovery took months, after which Dr. Isadore Snapper published a lengthy article in a scientific journal about his medical triumph.

In that journal, Snapper featured June’s wound in various stages of healing, which was as big as an orange and on her left collarbone. But the pictures also needlessly featured June’s face, and the article delved into aspects of her biography that were superfluous to the medical discussion. The woman pictured isn’t Jerrie, and to my eye, the photos bore signs of dodge and burn alterations, techniques I’d practiced in my darkroom days. Jerrie and June already shared numerous jungle diseases. I wondered if Jerrie’s body was the one carrying the true leishmaniasis scar.

After all her wonderful planning, the clouds were descending, and the chances of getting a clear day for the eclipse were diminishing by the second. It was amazing how Jerrie and Ruth, at their age, had still been able to make such an arduous trip from Florida to Kansas, but the drive had taken a lot out of them, especially from Jerrie. It was dawning on me that our advance arrival wasn’t just for scouting, it was for her to rest up. Throwing her frugality to the wind, Jerrie had rented a pickup truck with a crew cab so she could sleep in the back while Ruth drove. Her new bedtime was five p.m., but she started fading by three and sometimes at noon. With the eclipse thirty-six hours away, she was forcing herself to stay awake for the weather on the five o’clock news, and I started checking my phone for spots that were predicted to be clear.

As I went over to her bed to show her my phone, I noticed that she’d bought a new nightshirt, one with a roomier collar. By this time, she was already letting her guard down with me. I knew she had reading glasses because she’d donned them in my presence. She was openly flaunting a newer iPhone than mine, a better laptop than mine, and the latest, greatest iPad. She’d long since shown me her cochlear implant, a $100,000 hearing system paid for out of pocket, and she was considering getting a second. She was even picking up the tab for this business suite on the top floor of a nice hotel, using points and perks she’d accrued from previous stays with this chain. The moment had finally come that without telling me anything directly, she was letting me see who she really was.

And when she leaned in to see my phone, her shirt collar folded down, and there it was. The distinctive ring on a scar that had two circles.

I’d come to her to tell her story, and that was how we’d met. I never recorded her voice without announcing that I was doing so. She knew that I took pictures on our trips because I asked her to pose, and shared the photos with her afterward, which she enjoyed. Her home was her private refuge, and I never snooped around it beyond what she invited me to see. She had a canvas tote bag that she assiduously protected, and I never once looked in it.

But there were two times when I took pictures on the sly, and two times only. One was when I took a picture of Taaffe’s forearm scar, and this time, to record June’s leishmaniasis scar.

Did I really need this one last piece of proof? Was it any more convincing than the slew of links between her and June that I already had? Maybe not. But by now, I knew a bit about this world. In the universe of spies, scars like this are the type of proof they value. It’s also the type of proof they know how to protect.

Jerrie’s scar was the size of a tangerine and in the shape of a circle. There was a smaller, more deeply scarred circle within the larger circle. We had come all this way to view two circles in the sky become one. Our journey together was coming full circle. I felt a deep sense of relief at seeing her scar for some reason, but there was still the matter of the impending clouds.

The next day the gray arrived, and strong rains followed. The eclipse was twenty-four hours away, and after the meticulous planning, it seemed our Moon Tree would be scrubbed. Jerrie had been awaiting this trip for years, she said, and on all our other excursions, she always took the reins. She dictated where we went, when we ate, and where we slept. Whenever she asked for my opinion, she would always veto it. Every stop on all our travels had been a point of her choosing, and hers alone. Now, as the self-described most important moment of her life arrived and the skies closed in, she punted all the decisions to me.

“Where do you want to go?” she said, leaning in with that look she gives you when she means business. It was up to me to chart our course to a final clearing, and there was no guaranteed clearing in this entire section of the nation now.

By placing the final responsibility on me, I couldn’t help but feel she was putting me to a test. And while she refused to weigh in with the slightest preference, she also started to chime in with a new mantra. “If God means for us to see the eclipse, we will—but if he doesn’t, we won’t.” Yet she wasn’t accepting of whatever God’s will was. She was pressuring me to find a way. The question she really seemed to be asking was, Will God guide me to the proper spot or not? and the answer to that question was now uppermost in her mind.

I was here for a different calling. I’d gotten to know her as a hero, someone I wished I could have been, who flew and trained with astronauts and pioneered women’s pathway to the stars. But my calling somehow changed along the way. I’d seen the circle I’d come for the night before.

We awoke on August 21, 2017, as we always did, before the sun. The weather reports were bleak and everything looked bad. There was no area that was predicted to be clear within driving distance now. Jerrie was looking at me for my plan and asking for my decision. I offered that if the reports really were this bad, maybe we should just go to the Moon Tree anyway. At least it was a place of significance.

Jerrie seemed unsure, but the call was mine. “Atchison?” she asked, looking for my final answer. “Yup,” I said, feigning confidence as we split for our respective cars, her into the rented truck for resting and me leading the way in my Jeep Wrangler.

I started the ignition, and we began caravanning out of the hotel driveway with our signals on, to head in the direction of Atchison. I had my phone out, refreshing the weather app as the storm clouds gathered overhead. And just then, I saw the subtlest shift in the report. A place called Boonville, Missouri, had just switched from completely cloudy to partly cloudy. I pulled over, jumped out, and ran back to their truck. “BOONVILLE!” I yelled. “Follow me!” We sped off just as the clouds erupted.

It rained hard for the next hour or so as we tooled down the interstate. Ruth is a fantastic driver for a woman of any age, and damn if she wasn’t in her nineties and making this impressive drive. Yes, I recklessly drove with my phone out, refreshing the weather all the way. To my disbelief, the little hint of partly cloudy in Boonville remained consistent, while everywhere else was completely closed in.

Two hours into it, I wondered if I was noticing the faintest touch of brightness in the sky ahead. By three hours, I was sure the clouds had gotten a bit thinner. Ruth and Jerrie stayed with me all the way, and finally the Boonville exit arrived, but these were hardly sunny skies. We ramped off into a gas station and pulled over so we could talk.

This was Boonville. The clouds were thinner, but not by much, and this choice was long since locked in. I took comfort knowing that, according to my phone, it was pouring in Atchison, but this interstate gas station was hardly a Moon Tree. “Where the heck in Boonville should we try to watch this thing from?” I wondered. “The airport,” Jerrie said. I couldn’t help but smile and agree.

Turned out, they were throwing a big party. Boonville’s tiny airport was packed with hundreds, maybe thousands of cars. Tailgating, grilling, setting up monster telescopes and media dishes. They’d been celebrating for hours as we drove in just under the wire. Now, with her home-field advantage at an airport, it was Jerrie who took the lead. She and Ruth pulled ahead and guided us out onto a remote runway. I trusted she knew enough about aviation to be certain we wouldn’t get landed on. We parked away from the commotion and threw out our blanket just as the penumbral phase of the total eclipse began.

I felt pretty confident that I’d just gotten us to the thinnest clouds within a five-hundred-mile radius as I pulled out the folding chair I’d brought from Pennsylvania for Jerrie, knowing she was so frail. I set up a little picnic, a variety of snacks that I’d grabbed at the gas station, featuring nuts, olives, and iced tea. With my portable cooler as a makeshift table, it all felt so special now. We donned our glasses and watched the moon begin its slow traverse across the sun. We could see more detail than I would have thought through the light clouds, but all across the sky, ruinous storm clouds still loomed.

They say seeing a total eclipse is like life and death: either you’re in totality or you’re not. I had no expectations. I hadn’t come here for this. Still, when the moment came, it was beyond any words I can find for you. There truly is no experience that compares to seeing a total eclipse, and yes, the clouds stayed away for the entire amazing experience.

During totality, our glasses came off, and I saw her face and, on it, pure joy. The joy of a child, really, and on Ruth’s face, too. In the sky was a miraculously perfect, piercingly brilliant ring of light, and below it, on the horizon, a ring of orange. Everything was coming full circle. It was a perfect metronomic alignment, and it marked a moment like no other. I think we both knew we were at the end.

Immediately after totality, we parted with few words, and long drives in opposite directions. I suspected I would never see her again. I had a book to write. I had seen something extraordinary and rare and cruel and hard, and I needed to speak of what I knew.

She once said we were alike. I now understood she had a point. After all, the pen is a cruel weapon in its own right, and like all weapons, it can be used for good or ill. I would write what I had to write, regardless of the cost.

Jerrie once told me that she felt that liking someone was almost as important as loving them. And a question she wanted to know the answer to was whether or not I liked her. That was not an easy question. As she herself once said, I knew her well, “the good and the bad.” I always acted as if I did—like her, that is—but deep down, I was never sure. Now, having gotten to know her over these years, truly know her, and having written for you what I know, I believe I have an answer.

I do. The stronger image in a double exposure always catches our eye, and our mind makes sense of it, organizing it into something we recognize. Into something distinctly human. Into something very much like ourselves.

What I saw in Jerrie was a reflection. The arc of light bent around her, and what she presented to me was not real. I liked what I saw before me—the strong woman, the pioneer, the adventurer. And those were parts of her. Parts, but not all. She never showed me the rest directly, but I felt it, even at our first meeting. Try as she might to hide it, she always carried with her a quiet ruthlessness and a penchant for unrelenting calculation in the service of her own needs, her own survival, and hers alone.

To really see Jerrie, you had to look not directly at her, but at the dark matter bending the trajectory of the light. Some of that dark matter is masterfully concealed in redacted documents at the National Archives. Other pieces were, no doubt, lost to history entirely.

Over the course of knowing her for twelve years, I’ve come to understand that those shiny rockets, glistening planes, and American freedoms came at a price. The forces of good and evil in our country, in our world, and in our hearts are locked in mortal combat. Yet my mind still wanders back to my visiting friend in espionage who warned me about my space film. I would have trouble getting that story out, she told me. There would be issues, she said. Perhaps it wasn’t the right time, she added.

So what about this story? Can the story of what I discovered these past twelve years ever be told? Or does a glittering lie receive applause, while a hard and difficult reveal sinks from the weight of unwelcome darkness? I bet the last twelve years of my life on America and her freedoms, and I now wait to see if she rises to meet my hopes.

Jerrie Cobb died while I was writing my third draft. But I am still here, and I believe it is my duty, as difficult as it may be, to tell you what I know about this woman who was many things. A spy, an explorer, a gambler, an astronaut, an illusionist, a narcissist, and a con. She was not the woman I expected, and I’m sure she’s not what you expected, either. Jerrie Cobb was many things, but I can say now with a measure of certainty that Jerrie Cobb was but a figment of refracted light.

She also, undoubtedly, became a woman I know.

EPILOGUE

I never saw her again after the eclipse trip, at least, not the real Jerrie. After our parting, we sent numerous emails back and forth, but nothing of any substance. I began writing this book, and she was in her final chapter on this earth. Her emails became shorter, and she started to mention seeing me again in the hereafter. Suddenly, in June 2018, she sent me an urgent email and pleaded with me to drop everything and come see her. From the tone of her message, I knew she was no longer of sound mind.

When I arrived, the look of relief on Ruth’s face was palpable. Jerrie was in a wheelchair and a shadow of the figure she’d been the year before. For the first two minutes, she seemed like her old self, but she quickly devolved into a paranoia that she’d developed about Ruth holding her hostage in her own home. Jerrie also explained that she hadn’t been emailing much because she could no longer manage the computer cognitively, an admission she made directly and without emotion. Sending the short email asking for my help had taken her three hours.

According to Ruth, the onset of Jerrie’s mental deterioration had been very sudden, coming on the heels of a bad infection she’d contracted on a cruise to Central America. My armchair diagnosis was that she was suffering from a shutdown of her entire body, mentally and physically, due to age. I suspected she was in her nineties, not her late eighties, and her body had hit its expiration date. The infection was the last straw and had caused a precipitous decline.

While I was visiting, she took a fall that landed her in the ER. There the staff explained that she had been there too many times and would now require a visit and assessment at her home by a social worker. This was an intrusion of privacy I knew Jerrie could never accept, no matter what mental or physical state she was in. As long as she could fight, kick, or spit, no one would be evaluating Jerrie Cobb.

The house, which had always been spotless, was soiled and musty because the ninety-one-year-old caregiver, Ruth, was overwhelmed. There was scarcely a meal in the cupboards. I learned in my three-day stay that it had been Ruth’s idea for Jerrie to ask me to visit. Ruth was sending an SOS because Jerrie had become irrational, and through loyalty or subservience, Ruth found herself taking orders from a madwoman. Evidently, Ruth was hoping I could control Jerrie, since she believed I was the only person she might listen to. The pair were so reclusive, they had almost no other friends to call.

Jerrie was threatening Ruth that if she didn’t fix all her ills immediately, she would leave Ruth with no money, no home, and no future. Ruth’s sin was that she couldn’t make everything right again, as it had been before Jerrie became infirm. The day before I arrived, according to them both, at Jerrie’s insistence they had gone to the bank, and Jerrie had withdrawn large sums of cash and then handed it out the car window to strangers, to prove to Ruth that she would never get any of it.

Ruth told me she never cared about Jerrie’s money, that she had stayed with her through thick and thin because she never met anyone else who could provide her with such an exciting life. I had to think of my own past twelve years and how Jerrie had taken this small-town Pennsylvania filmmaker deep into a world of international intrigue that I never knew existed.

As Jerrie lay in her bed, now an invalid, I saw that she’d positioned all the items I’d given her over the years in the sightline from her pillow. The homemade birdhouse I’d sent her was just outside the window. The photograph of the Old Havana streetscape I’d brought from Cuba was hanging in her direct view. A postcard I’d once mailed her sat on the mantel in the sparse room. The only other mementos in her view were from an expedition she and Ruth had taken through South America. I knew I was among her only friends. I also knew these would be our last words.

So I challenged her. Did she really want her final chapter to be about lording her finances over someone who had loyally cared for her? Was money what was truly important in her life, and did she want that to be the sum total of who she was at her end? No, she said, she hadn’t cared about money, but she had made millions, and she would no longer be giving them to Ruth.

“How did you get these millions?” I asked.

“I worked my entire life for it!” she snapped.

Sundowning is a phenomenon when an aged person becomes agitated and unreasonable, often at nightfall. On this visit, Jerrie seemed almost like herself for spells in the morning, only to slide into sundowning mode by the afternoon. By actual sundown, Ruth was exhausted, having endured Jerrie’s berating and indignities for hours. At ninety-one, Ruth was running out of gas, mentally and physically. In the evenings, when Jerrie was finally in bed, Ruth began to unload her burdens to me, and it was in these talks that she shared with me her truth.

Jerrie had entered into a relationship with Ruth in the mid-1970s after Jerrie’s “retirement” from government work, and from that point on, they had traveled the world together, sometimes in the jungle, but often not. I assumed Jerrie and Ruth were partners, but that wasn’t the language they used. “Just friends” was the common explanation in their era, and it was the wording they preferred. I believe people should be allowed to frame their partnerships on their own terms. But there was another component to their relationship that went beyond friends, and it was distinctively different from that of life partners.

Jerrie had taken to impersonating Ruth. She took on Ruth’s identity for all her business dealings, and she used the persona of Ruth Lummis as a shield to protect her own life and finances from scrutiny. Ruth told me all about it while Jerrie was sleeping in the next room.

The Jerrie Cobb Foundation’s website gave the impression that Ruth was managing the charity’s affairs. In fact, Jerrie was doing the work and conducting the communications for the charity while using Ruth’s name. Ruth told me she was never involved in any of the business dealings for the charity. Ruth was also listed as a co-author of Jerrie’s second autobiography, Solo Pilot, but the solo pilot had written it herself.

For decades, whenever anyone contacted Jerrie, either by email or by snail mail, they found themselves communicating with “Ruth.” Jerrie’s version of “Ruth” was that of an overzealous gatekeeper who was keeping all inquiries away. The truth was, Jerrie was managing her own affairs while hiding in Ruth’s identity, often claiming that Jerrie was away and unavailable in the jungle. She did all this with Ruth’s full permission and awareness.

I had always suspected as much, as had others who had tried to contact Jerrie—but to hear that it was an overt arrangement, and to have Ruth confess that she was on board with the deception, cemented Jerrie’s modus operandi. According to Ruth, she handed over everything to Jerrie so she could conduct their business, including directing her pension payments into Jerrie’s control, and then she allowed Jerrie to represent herself as Ruth. Ruth understood that Jerrie needed to do this “for her own protection. She just pretends she’s me when she needs to,” Ruth told me casually, as if this were an everyday arrangement. The ability to use Ruth as an alter ego was a foundational component of their partnership.

I’d been on the receiving end of an email from “Ruth” when I first contacted Jerrie. “Ruth” had told me Jerrie was still working in the jungle and would be very hard to reach. Months later, when I wrote a second time, “Ruth” answered again, saying she was relaying a message from Jerrie after getting word to her in the Amazon. Of course, there was no jungle work by then, as the real Ruth Lummis confessed to me that night, and there hadn’t been for decades.

Jerrie Cobb had inhabited another person’s identity to shield herself, then conducted communication in that person’s name, with their full approval, loyalty, and compliance. Ruth was a real person with a real backstory and a real family when Jerrie was using her identity. Ruth Lummis does not look like Jerrie, and there are pictures out there that will prove it. Jerrie simply “impersonated her” when it suited her needs, and it was Jerrie who recruited Ruth as her partner in the deception.

Jerrie Cobb died on March 18, 2019, and Ruth succumbed from a sudden heart attack a few months later. My final words to Jerrie were, “You are, by far, the most fascinating person I have ever met,” to which she responded, “I have told you more than I have ever told anyone else in my entire life.”

For Bill and Mary,

My Guiding Lights

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My partner, Michele Mercure, voiced concerns about diverting our film production company resources to do this research, which we both doubted would ever result in a viable project. But in the end, she followed me into the weeds, holding my hand and making sure we both made it out. She immersed herself in a thousand footnotes while writing a musical score for the ages. This is her project as much as mine.

My sturdy and loving canine companion, Mazzie, sat with me while I wrote this book and protected me for every one of her twelve years, all of which coincided with this project. She was my muse. After she passed, Mexico took her place at my feet through the publishing edit. I am blessed.

Few friends were looped into the whole effort, but Paul and Judy Ware, David Thomas, Bobbi Carmitchell, Ashley McFalls, Briala da Silva, Heath Hofmeister, Conrad Bishop, Elizabeth Fuller, Bruce Roth, Quin Baker, Jill Craven, Scott and Barb Haverstick, and Lynn Rossi—thank you for your support. Also thanks to Dr. Rebecca Manno for seeing me through some tough times.

The army of archivists who protect our history are a national treasure. Over these twelve years, I have visited scores of libraries and archives, each staffed by knowledgeable professionals who guided me through finding aids, microfiche, and museum boxes. I see you now and I so appreciate your work. Mary Kay Schmidt at NARA, thank you for your dedication. I told you I was looking into the ladies of the case; I just didn’t say they were the same lady!

To John Newman, I will never forget our five a.m. document drills, but you are still the master. Lisa Pease, thank goodness there are a handful of us gals investigating this case. You have been generous with your wisdom.

And, more than any other, I give thanks to those countless researchers who came before, combing the files and questioning the official narrative. Google and the Mary Ferrell Foundation put your work into my hands at a moment’s notice—allowing me to see astonishing similarities in an astonishing instant. Everyone’s work stands on your shoulders.

Finally, thanks to my literary agent, David McCormick, and to my editor, Kevin Doughten, and to the entire team at Crown Publishing for bringing this project to the page.

APPENDIX 1

The Forearm Scar

After memorizing the scar on Jerrie’s left arm during my Tampa trip, I used Photoshop on a picture of my own forearm to document what I had seen. Here is the sketch I developed immediately upon my return from seeing Jerrie’s scar on November 3, 2012.

FIGURE 11A. My Photoshop illustration of Jerrie’s scar.

A year later, at a restaurant in Cozumel, Mexico, I surreptitiously took this picture of Jerrie’s scar with my iPhone.

FIGURE 11B. Photo of Jerrie’s left forearm and the scar.

I never asked Jerrie how she got the scar, but one day, unprompted, she offered an explanation. We were sitting on a dock in Mexico where several boys were roughhousing, when two fourteen-year-olds shoved a younger boy into the water. While the scene started out being playful, the older boys became too aggressive, and it looked like they were crossing a line or had done so before. Jerrie’s spine stiffened, and I sensed she might intervene. In my view, while the boys were too rough, I didn’t sense imminent danger, and this was not our country or culture.

After the crisis passed, I noticed that Jerrie couldn’t shake it. The tableau of two stronger Mexican boys roughing up the weaker had deeply upset her. So much so that she eventually felt compelled to explain her overreaction. That’s when she told me that, as a child in grade school, two boys had attacked her, stabbing her in the arm with a pencil and leaving the scar.

Her scar was not made with a pencil.

Interestingly, Jerrie’s forearm was prominently featured several times in Life magazine, each time with no visible scar. In fact, her scarless left arm was displayed from three different angles in Life’s 1960 astronaut rollout on her. The mark I saw could easily have been concealed with makeup, airbrushing, or a combination of those techniques. Her psychic scar was a lot harder to hide.

Catherine Taaffe was also deeply affected by the attack she had endured. Here is Taaffe’s letter to Robert Kennedy in the wake of the Bay of Pigs failure. Her simmering resentments from the assault are expressed at the end of the letter.

FIGURE 11C. The letter Catherine Taaffe sent to Robert Kennedy on April 24, 1961.

Click here to view as text.

APPENDIX 2

The Clavicle Scar

Whoever June Cobb was, she can be identified by a distinctive scar on her left clavicle. This notation was made over and over within her CIA file.

FIGURE 11D. The notation in June Cobb’s CIA paperwork describing the scar over her left clavicle.

The clavicle, especially the nubby end of the clavicle under the neck, is an unusual place to have a scar. During a fall or impact, this spot is unlikely to be injured since your chin or chest would take the brunt of the impact. But in June Cobb’s case, she’d suffered no physical trauma. Her scar was the result of a parasite she contracted during an early Amazon jungle adventure.

After June was successfully treated, a medical article about her recovery was published. Three images of June appeared in that article, as seen below. I believe these images exhibit signs of significant darkroom alterations. In the second image, for example, June’s two clavicles do not match up—her left clavicle is way too high to match the one on her right.

FIGURE 11E. The photos of June Cobb’s leishmaniasis wound published in Dr. Snapper’s article in 1952.

If my suspicions are correct, June’s identity was concealed in these pictures by replacing her head with that of a different woman, but the scar and its healing were represented accurately. That makes the final image in this series extremely significant because, in it, the worst area of disfigurement was located on her left clavicle in the shape of a nickel, near the bone’s end under her neck.

And that’s exactly where I documented the similar scar on Jerrie Cobb’s left clavicle. You can also see a large dark red ring, matching the border of June’s larger scarred area.

FIGURE 11F. Left: Photo of June’s healed scar as published in Dr. Snapper’s 1952 article. Right: Photo of Jerrie Cobb’s scar on her left clavicle.

NOTES

PRELUDE

The Mercury 13 by Martha Ackmann Martha Ackmann, The Mercury 13 (New York: Random House, 2003).

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I was now committed to making Jerrie and I worked together to tell her story from 2009 to 2011. Since then several projects have elevated the story into the public consciousness, including the Netflix documentary Mercury 13 (Fine Point Films, 2018) and The Right Stuff (Warner Bros., 2020), where Jerrie was played by Mamie Gummer.

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When NASA canceled the program Technically, the women’s tests in 1961 were canceled by the navy, which was hosting the phase two tests at its Pensacola facility. NASA has always claimed it was never an official program of theirs. Nevertheless, NASA doctors ran the program, NASA hired Jerrie as a consultant, and NASA gave Jerrie and others access to its equipment.

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“My mother could probably pass” John Glenn testimony, Committee on Science and Astronautics, U.S. House of Representatives, 87th Congress, 2nd session, July 17, 18, 1962, p. 64.

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When I first reached out to her My first email to Jerrie was on August 7, 2007. Ruth Lummis replied on August 24.

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My first sighting of Jerrie Author’s first meeting with Jerrie Cobb, Baltimore-Washington International Airport, September 23, 2008.

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In the end, Cochran destroyed Jacqueline Cochran statement, Committee on Science and Astronautics, U.S. House of Representatives, 87th Congress, 2nd session, July 17, 18, 1962.

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CHAPTER 1: REDBIRD

1.1 The Drive

movie portrayed other influential NASA pioneers Hidden Figures, directed by Theodore Melfi (20th Century Fox, 2016).

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from which our screenplay was developed My screenplay, Almost Mercury, was based on thirty to forty hours of interviews with Jerrie over six trips to her home in Humble, Texas, in 2009 and 2010.

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I held the exclusive option On March 9, 2010, Jerrie and I signed a contract for an exclusive limited life-rights option. Jerrie was paid $40,000 and would have received an additional payment had cameras rolled on what was budgeted as a $15 million production.

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appeared in thousands of pages The June Cobb CIA files are held in the JFK Assassination Records Collection at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland. The Mary Ferrell Foundation hosts an online database at MaryFerrell.org, where many of these records can be accessed.

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She was a blond Numerous CIA documents give June Cobb’s physical description and biography, including “Personal Record Questionnaire for Viola June Cobb” (form), August 9, 1967, RIF# 104-10111-10191.

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She knew Fidel Castro! Harry Hermsdorf, “Contingent Recruitment of Viola June Cobb” (memo), June 6, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10123.

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she was spying on Fidel Castro! Jean Pierson, “Request for Approval of Investigative Action—Viola June Cobb” (form), June 9, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10114.

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Both left home in their twenties For June: “Personal Record Questionnaire for Viola June Cobb” (form), August 9, 1967, RIF# 104-10111-10191. For Jerrie: Jerrie Cobb and Jane Rieker, Woman into Space: The Jerrie Cobb Story (Hoboken, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963), p. 112 (Ponca City), p. 58 (physical description), p. 6 (Norman), pp. 22–23 (Civil Air Patrol), p. 71 (speaks Spanish), pp. 73–88 (Latin America and South America).

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June Cobb lobbied on behalf Mexico City to HQS, “Newspaper Article: June Cobb” (dispatch), May 18, 1962 (attachment written by June Cobb), RIF# 104-10266-10010, p. 3. The Anti-Cocoa League, which June was involved with, was founded in 1957 to address the public health concerns of coca chewing by Indigenous Amazon populations. See also Denny Davis, “Anti-Coca Drive Started in Peru,” (UPI) Tyler Morning Telegraph (Tex.), June 13, 1957.

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the same Andean mountain people Jerrie Cobb, Solo Pilot (Jerrie Cobb Foundation, 1997), pp. 163–223.

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Both women had visited the isolated region For June: Jack Anderson, “Meet June Cobb: She’s a Soldier of Fortune,” Parade, August 12, 1962. For Jerrie rafting into the Andes near Cali, see Cobb and Rieker, Woman into Space, pp. 80–82.

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a lifelong jungle-borne disease For June: June Cobb, “Summary of Her Medical Record from First Attack of Tropical Fever,” October 20, 1960, RIF# 104-10175-10203. For Jerrie: Jerrie Cobb, emails to the author, January 28 and March 11, 2011, as well as numerous conversations with the author.

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riddled with cannibalistic headhunters Lewis Cotlow, Amazon Headhunters (New York: Holt & Co., 1953). See also the film Jungle Headhunters, produced by Julian Lesser (RKO Pictures, 1951).

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1.2 Astonishing Similarities

All that is true See Subchapter 2.6.

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local Civil Air Patrol squadron Interrogation of June Cobb (transcript), “Attachment to Memorandum to Chief, Security Support Division,” June 29, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10078, p. 9.

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constant fixture at local airports Jerrie Cobb and Jane Rieker, Woman into Space: The Jerrie Cobb Story (Hoboken, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963), pp. 22–23. See also Orbit, the 1947 Classen High School yearbook, where Jerrie is pictured as a junior.

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too “dumb” to fly a plane Interrogation of June Cobb (transcript), “Attachment to Memorandum to Chief, Security Support Division,” June 29, 1960, RIF# 104-10174,10078, p. 9.

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“twin sister involved in aviation” David Atlee Phillips, interview at HSCA Offices, August 24, 1978, RIF# 180-10110-10100, p. 7.

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she was hired for a PR position “Miss Cobb Leaves for South America,” Ponca City News, April 22, 1949.

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she was arrested Cobb and Rieker, Woman into Space, pp. 69–72.

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June was already fluent in Spanish “Miss Cobb Will Attend Mexico City University,” Ponca City News, June 25, 1947.

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serving identical countries For June: “Miss Cobb Leaves for South America.” For Jerrie: Cobb and Rieker, Woman into Space, pp. 73–83.

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love who was also a pilot For June: Interrogation of June Cobb (transcript), “Attachment to Memorandum to Chief, Security Support Division,” June 29, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10078, pp. 41–46. For Rafael Herran Olozaga’s pilot’s license, see William Johnston, U.S. Department of Treasury, to U.S. customs commissioner (letter), December 31, 1956, Records of the Drug Enforcement Agency, RG 170-74-12, Box 22, National Archives. For Jerrie: Cobb and Rieker, Woman into Space, pp. 84–88.

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both relationships ended tragically June turned on her fiancé and assisted the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in raiding his drug ring: “Department of State Telegram from Quito to Secretary of State,” October 17, 1957. This internal telegram on the bust adds, “One June Cobb will know the case.” Jerrie’s love, Jack Ford, died in a plane crash: “Aircraft Executive One of Two Killed,” UPI, September 2, 1959.

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narcotics laboratory for her then-fiancé Jack Anderson, “Meet June Cobb: She’s a Soldier of Fortune,” Parade, August 12, 1962.

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headwaters of the Rio Naya Cobb and Rieker, Woman into Space, pp. 80–82. The name of the river basin where June’s fiancé’s drug lab was located was edited out of the transcript of her CIA interrogation transcript, “Attachment to Memorandum to Chief, Security Support Division,” June 29, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10078, p. 41.

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clearing land alongside Indigenous tribes Numerous conversations between Jerrie Cobb and the author from 2009 to 2011. Jerrie spoke about helping to clear and repair airstrips for access to Indigenous tribes.

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in the manufacture of cocaine Meg Laughlin, “The Discarded Astronaut,” Miami Herald, June 12, 1983.

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aspects of their South American work For June: During the 1950s, June worked for the Federal Bureau of Narcotics helping to bust her fiancé’s Ecuadorian and Colombian drug ring. See Anderson, “Meet June Cobb”; Quito to U.S. secretary of state (telegram), October 17, 1957, Records of the Drug Enforcement Agency, RG 170-74-12, Box 22, National Archives. For Jerrie: She was employed in the 1950s by Fleetways and worked in concert with the State Department and the U.S. military in the sale of surplus warplanes. Cobb and Rieker, Woman into Space, pp. 69–72. Jerrie described Fleetways as a “prime contractor” for the U.S. Air Force. See materials in Papers of Jerrie Cobb, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University.

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both claimed Ponca City, Oklahoma For June: Viola June Cobb testimony, Hearing Before the Senate Judiciary Sub-Committee on Internal Security, March 30, 1962, RIF# 104-10218-10384, p. 1. For Jerrie: “Fliers’ Group Names Poncan ‘Woman of the Year in Aviation,’ ” Ponca City News, July 7, 1959.

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with her drug-smuggling boyfriend Interrogation of June Cobb (transcript), “Attachment to Memorandum to Chief, Security Support Division,” June 29, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10078, pp. 6–7. “June Cobb” and “Viola June Cobb” are listed on the Havana to Miami flight manifests, November 9 and December 14, 1956, National Archives, via Ancestry.com.

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with Cuba as her pit stop Jerrie Cobb, “Caribbean Island-Hopping,” Flying Magazine, November 1958. See also “City Flier Finishes Women’s Air Race,” Ponca City News, May 22, 1956.

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in the spring of 1960 Harry Hermsdorf, “Contingent Recruitment of Viola June Cobb” (memo), June 1, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10123.

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and agreeing to organize women pilots Martha Ackmann, The Mercury 13 (New York: Random House, 2003), chaps. 3–6.

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numerous Latin American leaders June was acquainted with the president of Mexico, Fidel Castro, and Guatemalan ex-president Arévalo. Jerrie knew the vice president of Peru and numerous Colombian and Peruvian air force generals.

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titans of industry June knew Alfred Aufhauser, Armando Peralta, and Lyle Stuart. Jerrie knew Lew Rockwell, George Pew, and Floyd Odlum.

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celebrated artists June’s friends included Fritz Pappenheim, Elena Garro, Eunice Odio, Celia Sanchez, and Carlos Pellecer. Jerrie knew Arlene Francis, Art Linkletter, and Frank Sinatra.

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connections in the White House June carried a handwritten note from Vice President Nixon’s aide Robert Cushman to navigate U.S. Customs: R. E. Cushman (letter on White House letterhead), June 6, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10120. Jerrie received a special White House customs waiver for a world record flight: Telegram from Bryce Harlow (at the White House) to Oklahoma City, May 21, 1957, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum.

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Both were employed by Time-Life For June: Viola June Cobb testimony, Hearing Before the Senate Judiciary Sub-Committee on Internal Security, March 30, 1962, RIF# 104-10218-10384, p. 3. For Jerrie: Jerrie Cobb to Jean Ross Howard (letter), July 20, 1965.

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Both developed movie projects Jerrie worked with me to develop our space film from 2008 to 2011. June Cobb had worked at developing The Shark and the Sardines book into a movie: June Cobb, “I Had Written Her” (memo), March 22, 1961, RIF# 104-10175-10227.

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Both worked for oil companies For June: Viola June Cobb testimony, Hearing Before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Internal Security, March 30, 1962, RIF# 104-10218-10384, p. 2. For Jerrie: Cobb and Rieker, Woman into Space, p. 33.

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syndicated news stories For June: Anderson, “Meet June Cobb.” For Jerrie: Cobb and Rieker, Woman into Space. A corresponding ten-part series ran in newspapers nationwide in July 1960; see Subchapter 9.23.

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Both testified to Congress For June: Viola June Cobb testimony, Hearing Before the Senate Judiciary Sub-Committee on Internal Security, March 30, 1962, RIF# 104-10218-10384, p. 2. For Jerrie: Committee on Science and Astronautics, U.S. House of Representatives, 87th Congress, 2nd session, July 17, 18, 1962.

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seventy-two hours before June Jerrie Cobb to FLATS (First Lady Astronaut Trainees) (letter), April 5, 1962, Myrtle Thompson Cagle Collection, International Women’s Air and Space Museum. In this letter, Jerrie says she attended the congressional testimony of William Teller, which took place on March 27, 1962.

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same geographical circuit of cities See Subchapter 2.4.

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no visible means of support June Cobb, after retiring from the CIA, maintained a Park Avenue address in New York for over forty years. For Jerrie, see Interlude 9.

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Both disappeared for extended periods During the House Select Committee’s investigation into the Kennedy assassination, investigators were unable to locate June Cobb: Edwin Lopez and Dan Hardway, “Oswald, the CIA and Mexico City, aka the Lopez Report,” for the HSCA, January 2, 1979, RIF# 180-10110-10484, pp. 230–31. The author has determined June was connected to a commune run by the Lindisfarne Association during this period. From the mid-1960s through the early ’80s, Jerrie Cobb frequently spent time in the Amazon jungle, according to her published biographies and interviews, including ones conducted by the author.

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Both used pseudonyms June Cobb used false names for her work in the CIA, one of which was “June Corwin.” Jean Pierson, “Notes: AMUPAS/1 Trip to Washington, D.C.,” February 1, 1961, RIF# 104-10175-10269. Life used the pseudonym “Janice Crawford” for Jerrie while prepping her story. Papers of Jerrie Cobb, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University.

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Both opposed aspects Jean Pierson, “Telephonic Contact with Cobb,” April 22, 1961, RIF# 104-10174-10077; Jerrie Cobb testimony, Committee on Science and Astronautics, U.S. House of Representatives, 87th Congress, 2nd session, July 17, 18, 1962.

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Both were in Mexico City For June: Mexico City to HQS, “Possible Travel of Guatemala Communists Abroad,” October 21, 1963, RIF# 104-10092-10111. For Jerrie: “Jerrie Cobb, She’s Ready for Space, but NASA Says No,” The News (D.F. Mexico) October 16, 1963, Papers of Jerrie Cobb, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University.

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Both intersected with events See Subchapter 1.5.

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Both adopted a reclusive lifestyle See Subchapter 4.7. See also Interlude 9.

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country for spying For June: “Guatemala Boots Yank,” (AP) Statesman Journal (Ore.), November 10, 1961. June was also unwelcome in Cuba: Jean Pierson, “New York Trip, ⅞ Nov” (memo for the record), November 9, 1960, RIF# 104-10175-10299. For Jerrie: Cobb and Rieker, Woman into Space, pp. 69–72.

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1.3 Someone Who Met June

the matter of double identity John Newman, Oswald and the CIA (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1995).

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Newman got back to me John Newman, phone call with the author, December 20, 2010.

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1.4 Learning More About June

relocating to Havana at his invitation Jack Anderson, “Meet June Cobb: She’s a Soldier of Fortune,” Parade, August 12, 1962.

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She was recruited into the agency Harry Hermsdorf, “Contingent Recruitment of Viola June Cobb” (memo), June 6, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10123.

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then relocated to Mexico City “Personal Record Questionnaire for Viola June Cobb” (form), August 9, 1967, RIF# 104-10111-10191.

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New York City until at least Request for cancellation, April 19, 1968, in “Folder on Cobb, Viola June,” RIF# 104-10266-10026, p. 16.

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as Fidel Castro’s secretary “Office of Security File on Cobb, Viola June,” NARA RIF# 1993.08.02.10:27:46:250060, p. 90.

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urging his so-called loyalists See Chapter 7.

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collaborator, William Morgan Anderson, “Meet June Cobb.”

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but June Cobb intervened Charles Thomas, “Lee Harvey Oswald and Kennedy Assassination” (memo), December 25, 1965, RIF# 104-10067-10364.

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claimed June maimed her pet cat Win Scott (pseud. Willard Curtis), “Former Wife of Octavio Paz Rents a Room to June Cobb” (memo), November 26, 1964, RIF# 104-10067-10377. See also Chapter 4.

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1.5 On the Day

seven-seat Aero Commander Jerrie Cobb was employed in the marketing department of Aero Commander from 1959 to 1963, during which time she always had one of their planes at her disposal.

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so they reported the incident Dick Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1992), p. 576. The story of the plane at Redbird Airport was told to Russell by Mary Ferrell, the JFK researcher and namesake of MaryFerrell.org. She was a Dallas resident and heard the radio reports about the twin-engine plane on the day of the assassination.

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took him closer to Redbird See Subchapter 10.3.

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was still in his pocket SA R. C. Warner, “Report re: Bus Routes in Jefferson-Marsalis Area,” June 15, 1964, Warren Commission Document 1128.

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June was atop their witness list “Re Meeting with Gary Cornwell, Deputy Chief Counsel, HSCA” (memo), May 19, 1978, RIF# 104-10067-10047.

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look for a “June Cobb Sharp” S. D. Breckinridge (CIA) to G. Robert Blakey (HSCA), “HSCA Request 19 July 78 OLC 78-2718—Results of Inquiries About Planned Interviewees in Mexico City,” July 31, 1978, RIF# 104-10135-10205.

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was never brought forward Edwin Lopez and Dan Hardway, “Oswald, the CIA and Mexico City, aka the Lopez Report,” for the HSCA, January 2, 1979, RIF# 180-10110-10484, p. 231.

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We sat down in the restaurant Jerrie Cobb’s conversation with the author, Sheraton Newark Airport Hotel, December 30, 2010.

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Jerrie knew it had rattled me Author to Jerrie Cobb (emails), November 5 and December 13, 2010.

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had even been accused of narcotics Notes Cobb wrote and gave to her case officer on October 26, 1960, in Reel 11, Folder B, “CIA/DO/LA File on Viola June Cobb as Reviewed by Ed Lopez,” pp. 39–46.

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“Jane Rieker was there” Jane Rieker was a Life magazine reporter and the co-author of Jerrie’s 1963 autobiography, Woman into Space.

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Interlude 1: The Interregnum

staying in touch informally Author to Jerrie Cobb, email ending the contractual arrangement, March 1, 2011.

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CHAPTER 2: JUNE COBB

2.1 False Identities in Espionage

National Archives in College Park Congress enacted the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. The act mandated that all JFK assassination files were to be housed in a single collection, which is now at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland.

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“life under a pseudonym” James Doolittle, William Franke, Morris Hadley, and William Pawley, Report on the Covert Activities of the Central Intelligence Agency (1954), pt. 3, Discussion, p. 8, CIA FOIA Reading Room, CIA.gov. The authors made up a special study group appointed by President Eisenhower.

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he recommended making a more persuasive pitch Ibid.

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“retired under cover” John Tunheim, Henry Graff, Kermit Hall, William Joyce, and Anna Nelson, Final Report of the Assassinations Records Review Board, September 30, 1998, p. 48.

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“I wasn’t going to send” Pete Earley and Gerald Shur, WITSEC: Inside the Federal Witness Protection Program (New York: Bantam Books, 2002), p. 91.

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similarities to their old one Ibid., p. 94.

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schools they didn’t attend Ibid., p. 91.

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WITSEC has successfully protected Statistics are available on WITSEC’s webpage at www.usmarshals.gov/​witsec.

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“A fictitious background and history” U.S. Senate, Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Undercover Activities (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983), p. 586.

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a spy’s retirement For example, John Whitten, a CIA officer, is named within the JFK documents as having retired “under cover.” See “AARB-Request CIA-2: Background Questions on the Collection,” RIF# 104-10335-10001, p. 5.

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still needed to remain secret Philip Shenon, “Why We Still Don’t Have the JFK Assassination Files,” Politico, November 15, 2022.

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needed a lifetime of backstopping The CIA objected to revealing true names for many CIA officers within the JFK release, including CIA employees who had retired “under cover” or “covertly,” citing the employees’ “personal safety”: “AARB-CIA Issues—Employee Names,” RIF# 104-10332-10007, pp. 16–17 (covert retirements), pp. 39–46 (name substitutions for personal safety).

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a mole in the highest reaches Edward Jay Epstein, James Jesus Angleton: Was He Right? (N.p.: Fast Track Press, 2011).

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“wilderness of mirrors” David Robarge, “Cunning Passages, Contrived Corridors,” Studies in Intelligence 53, no. 4 (2010), www.CIA.gov. Angleton, a former English major, borrowed the phrase from a T. S. Eliot poem.

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2.2 The CIA’s Investigation into June and Jerrie

the agency initiated an investigation For the report on the investigation, see “The Office of Security File on Cobb, Viola June,” September 6, 1960, RIF# 1993.08.10.27:46:250060, pp. 28–29. The series of memos to the special agent in charge, from early September 1960, are on pp. 45–54.

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Jean Pierson, launched an inquiry Jean Pierson, “Request for Field Check—June Cobb” (memo), August 29, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10099.

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splashed Jerrie’s face “A Lady Proves She’s Fit for Space Flight,” Life, August 29, 1960, pp. 72–75.

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“relationship, if any” Pierson, “Request for Field Check.”

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“It was suggested to you” Memo to special agent in charge, “The Office of Security File on Cobb, Viola June,” ca. September 3, 1960, NARA RIF# 1993.08.10.27.46.250060, p. 46.

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the two fathers had no relationship Report of Investigation, September 6, 1960, ibid., p. 27.

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“Not Identical with Subject” News article on Jerrie Cobb, attached to the investigation report, ibid., p. 50.

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her initial CIA security interviews “Pierson, Jean” (Case Officer Contact Form), June 6, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10024.

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2.3 June Cobb’s Coded CIA File

as they’re called today Today an agent is a person whom an intelligence officer recruits and runs out in the field to do the spying. But during the Cold War era, agent was the preferred term for a career CIA officer. I have chosen to use agent in this book because it was the term used for an officer throughout the June Cobb era.

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Cryptonyms are usually capitalized John Tunheim, Henry Graff, Kermit Hall, William Joyce, and Anna Nelson, Final Report of the Assassinations Records Review Board (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1998), September 30, 1998, p. 52.

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Agents may have numerous pseudonyms On pseudonyms and how they are used, see David Atlee Phillips testimony, Select Committee on Assassinations, U.S. House of Representatives, April 25, 1978, RIF# 180-10110-10016, pp. 6–7.

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matching initials or other signifiers Ibid., pp. 7–8.

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how the CIA felt about him A working database of CIA cryptonyms and their solutions can be found at MaryFerrell.org.

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only one confirmed pseudonym Sara Prosser, “Viola June Cobb” (request for approval), September 5, 1962, RIF# 104-10218-10185.

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Social Security information HQS to Mexico City, “AMUPAS/1” (dispatch), December 11, 1961, RIF# 104-10175-10000.

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another Social Security number Lucille R. Twogood to Office of Security, “Social Security Account Application for June Cobb,” August 5, 1963, RIF# 104-10111-10198.

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These documents, taken together In February 2020, the author submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the CIA for all of June Cobb’s unreleased files. As of April 2023, the CIA was still processing that request.

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“Annabelle Wilson,” or “Anna” “Cobb, Viola June” (form), undated, RIF# 104-10174-10075.

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as “Clarinda Sharp” “Request for Green List Name Check—Viola June Cobb alias Clarinda E. Sharp,” September 5, 1962, RIF# 104-10175-10119.

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phoned in as “Joan” Jean Pierson, “Subject—Telephone Call with AMUPAS/1 in Mexico” (memo), July 17, 1961, RIF# 104-10266-10021.

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mother’s maiden name S. D. Breckinridge (CIA) to G. Robert Blakey (HSCA), “HSCA Request 19 July 78 OLC 78-2718—Results of Inquiries About Planned Interviewees in Mexico City,” July 31, 1978, RIF# 104-10135-10205. See also Subchapter 4.7.

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“I trust her with my secrets” “Attachment to Memorandum to Chief, Security Support Division,” June 29, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10078, p. 101.

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2.4 The June-Jerrie Timeline

Jerrie signed a landing ticket Mrs. J. Cobb, “Air Navigation Decree, Cap. 39, Zanzibar Aerodrome Landing and Housing Fees #1581,” May 13, 1960, Papers of Jerrie Cobb, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University.

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flew to Africa during this period Jerrie Cobb and Jane Rieker, Woman into Space: The Jerrie Cobb Story (Hoboken, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963), pp. 150–54.

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I have dated photographs Numerous dated photos from Jerrie’s Africa trip are held in the Papers of Jerrie Cobb, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University.

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news coverage “Gold Coasting,” Palm Beach Post, April 27, 1960; “Soroptimists Honor Three Women,” Daily Oklahoman, May 19, 1960; “Aero Design, Join and See the World,” Aero Commander Newsletter, Summer 1960.

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travel manifest for her return flight “Geraldyn Cobb of Ponca City, Oklahoma,” is listed on the Lisbon to Miami flight manifest, May 19, 1960, National Archives, via Ancestry.com.

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working for Castro in May 1960 Harry Hermsdorf, “Contingent Recruitment of Viola June Cobb” (memo), June 1, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10123.

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“employed in Havana” Viola June Cobb testimony, Hearing Before the Senate Judiciary Sub-Committee on Internal Security, March 30, 1962, RIF# 104-10218-10384, p. 4.

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he telephoned June in Havana Birch D. O’Neal to chief WH/4/CI, “June Cobb Former Radio and Television Commentator” (memo), July 1, 1960, RIF# 104-10165-10173.

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contacts with her CIA handlers June received a visit in Cuba from her CIA case officer from May 24 to 26, 1960: see Harry Hermsdorf, “Contingent Recruitment of Viola June Cobb” (memo), June 1, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10123. A telegram was also sent to June in Havana on May 31, 1960: see New York to June Cobb in Havana (Western Union cablegram), May 31, 1960, in Reel 10, Folder E, “Cobb, Viola June Cobb,” RIF# 1994.03.11.13.45.320005, p. 124.

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manifest for her return “June Cobb of Ponca, Oklahoma,” is listed on the Havana to Miami flight manifest, June 2, 1960, National Archives, via Ancestry.com.

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2.5 The Element of Disguise

“If you were working” “Former CIA Operative Explains How Spies Use Disguises” (video), Wired, October 22, 2018, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=JASUsVY5YJ8.

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“following the wrong person” Elizabeth Winkler, “The CIA’s Former Disguise Chief Drops Her Mask,” Wall Street Journal, December 12, 2019.

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She neatly sidestepped my premise International Spy Museum, “Spy Writers Roundtable” (video), June 5, 2020, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=TK6KRuN2kK8.

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“twin sister involved in aviation” David Atlee Phillips, interview by HSCA at HSCA Offices, August 23, 1978, RIF# 180-10110-10100, p. 7.

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the agency’s campaign to unseat Castro David Atlee Phillips testimony, Church Committee, U.S. Senate, July 31, 1975, RIF# 157-10002-10065, pp. 5, 8.

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more than one hundred identities On pseudonyms and how they are used, see David Atlee Phillips testimony, Select Committee on Assassinations, U.S. House of Representatives, April 25, 1978, RIF# 180-10110-10016, p. 7.

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still trying to bring June forward For Hardway’s handwritten notes from the Phillips interview, see untitled, August 23, 1978, RIF# 180-101142-10078. See also Subchapter 4.7.

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Phillips tossed out the “twin sister” idea Phillips was stationed in Mexico City with June from 1961 to 1963, and he went with her and her case officer into their operations against Castro. Some researchers have concluded that Phillips was June’s local case officer in Mexico City, a role I have yet to confirm.

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A collage of Jerrie’s face “She’s Ready for Space, but NASA Says No,” The News (D. F. Mexico), October 16, 1963, Papers of Jerrie Cobb, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University.

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2.6 The Existence of Two People

published during her CIA tenure Jack Anderson, “Meet June Cobb: She’s a Soldier of Fortune,” Parade, August 12, 1962. See also Subchapter 9.13.

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she resettled to New York City S. D. Breckinridge (CIA) to G. Robert Blakey (HSCA), “HSCA Request 19 July 78 OLC 78-2718—Results of Inquiries About Planned Interviewees in Mexico City,” July 31, 1978, RIF# 104-10135-10205.

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intellectuals in the 1970s called Lindisfarne William Irwin Thompson, “Sex and the Commune,” Lindisfarne Cafe (memoir-style blogpost), WildRiverReview.com.

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both photographically and as a person William Irwin Thompson, interview by the author, September 17, 2019, and subsequent photographs emailed to the author. Thompson founded the Lindisfarne Association, where June Cobb was a resident member in the late 1970s.

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“I can’t conceive of June betraying” William Irwin Thompson to the author, September 27, 2019.

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“deadly enemy of free men” Cobb speech, in Reel 10, Folder E, “Cobb, Viola June,” RIF# 1994.03.11.13:45:14:320005, p. 184. See also Subchapter 8.2.

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strategized with her case officer Jean Pierson, “June Cobb Possibilities” (notes), undated, RIF# 104-10174-10083.

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attractive blond in every instance “Personal Record Questionnaire for Viola June Cobb” (form), August 9, 1967, RIF# 104-10111-10191; Harry Hermsdorf, “Recruitment Plans for Viola June Cobb” (memo), RIF# 104-10174-10124; and Drew Pearson, “Washington Merry Go Round: Secret Blonde Witness” (syndicated column), Orlando Sentinel, April 13, 1962. See also “Blonde Moves Ahead of Castro,” San Antonio Express, September 18, 1960.

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vouched for by June herself Photograph of June Cobb from the private collection of Dr. John Newman, shared with author.

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2.7 Seeking Evidence That Could Be Trusted

I was unable to get through Juan Jacomino, press secretary of Cuban Interest Section, to the author (email), June 11, 2013.

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Igor Gordevitch, a senior editor Harry Hermsdorf, “June Cobb/Note Given Her by Castro Agent in Miami” (memo), June 10, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10110.

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June also socialized with Jorge Losada “Tuesday Telephone Will Be Installed in My Room Under Name Clarinda E. Sharp” (note), November 12, 1960, RIF# 104-10175-10297.

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used to send coded signals Mexico City to HQS (cable), October 19, 1965, in “Folder on Cobb, Viola June, Vol. VII,” RIF# 104-10266-10026, p. 167.

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a short walk from Vision Jean Pierson, “AMUPAS/1 Trip to Washington,” March 23, 1961, RIF# 104-10175-10071. Cobb’s money was wired to 647 Madison Avenue in New York. Vision’s offices were at 635 Madison Avenue.

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undercover as a German journalist Harry K. Hermsdorf, “Operational Report of Contact Possibilities in Cuba” (draft memo), April 6, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10125.

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Hermsdorf penned two memos Harry Hermsdorf, “Meeting with June Cobb, Aide to Juan Orta” (memo), June 22, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10121.

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Fortuna was gracious and came prepared Fortuna Calvo-Roth, interview by the author, New York City, June 24, 2015.

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the hot topic for journalists “FIDEL: ¿Dividira las Americas?” Vision, May 6, 1960. This Vision cover story was the result of Fortuna Calvo and her colleagues’ trip to Cuba in April 1960.

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Interlude 2: Ponca City and Intelligence

which little Cobb girls had grown up Author’s trip to Oklahoma with Heath Hofmeister, June 4–9, 2011.

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Jerrie’s parents moved to Ponca Jerrie Cobb and Jane Rieker, Woman into Space: The Jerrie Cobb Story (Hoboken, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963), p. 33.

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she lived there intermittently Ibid. See also “Jerrie Cobb Who Lives with Her Parents…,” Ponca City News, May 12, 1955.

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between her jungle forays “Miss June Cobb Arrives to Visit Her Parents,” Ponca City News, September 12, 1951, describes how June arrived for a long recuperative stay. “Miss June Cobb Named Secretary to Haynes,” Ponca City News, March 3, 1957, reports on June’s local job in Ponca City.

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these trivial articles For one of dozens of blurbs on Jerrie’s childhood, see “Former Congressman U.S. Stone…,” Daily Oklahoman, October 25, 1931.

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June Cobb was born and raised For one of over fifty Ponca City News blurbs on June’s childhood activities, see “Chapel at McKinley,” Ponca City News, February 13, 1946.

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Their first extended geographic alignment June was in Ponca City then according to “Miss June Cobb Arrives to Visit Her Parents.” Jerrie was there according to “Organizational Meeting Called by Tennis Group,” Ponca City News, October 14, 1951; “Jerry Cobb, Young Lady Employee of Snyder Aircraft at Ponca City…,” Enid Events, February 28, 1952; and “Miss Cobb to Compete in Air Races,” Ponca City News, June 25, 1952.

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both set sail for Latin America For June: “Viola June Cobb” is listed on the Barranquilla, Colombia, to New York flight manifest, November 2, 1953, National Archives, via Ancestry.com. For Jerrie: Cobb and Rieker, Woman into Space, pp. 61–72. That autobiography says Jerrie met Jack Ford in October 1953 and immediately flew for Fleetways to Ecuador, where she was arrested for spying. However, I have found no flight manifests for Jerrie using that name flying home from South America in 1953 or 1954 as her book describes. Her earliest commercial flight manifest returning from South America was on January 11, 1955.

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as a very young woman from Ponca City Lillian Taylor, interview by Valerie Haynes for the Pioneer Women’s Museum (video), 2003, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=P72JFQvndoE.

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Lillian Bowles Taylor, June Cobb’s stepsister Lucy Bowles, Lillian’s mother, was June Cobb’s stepmother. Jean Pierson to Office of Security, “Request for Clearance on Jasper E. Cobb” (memo), August 29, 1960. The 1940 Ponca City telephone directory confirms that Lillian and her mother, Lucy Bowles, lived at 710 Sunset Avenue in Ponca City, which became June’s family’s home during her CIA tenure.

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jobs were available Taylor interview by Haynes.

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one of the airfields being used Tom Killebrew, “The RAF in American Skies—How British Pilots Trained in the US During WW2,” MilitaryHistoryNow.com, January 22, 2016.

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“so at twenty” Taylor interview by Haynes.

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So Lillian sued Uncle Sam Ibid.

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performing piano recitals “Miss Stone Plans Five Piano Ensemble,” Ponca City News, February 10, 1935.

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turning her attention to dramatics “Dagg Is Crowned City’s Li’l Abner,” Ponca City News, March 3, 1944.

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she co-directed a play “The Cast Has Been Chosen…,” Ponca City News, September 26, 1943, p. 19.

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picked up her high school diploma Cat Tale, Ponca City High School Yearbook, 1944.

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Darr School of Aeronautics was just closing “British Air School to Close April 15,” Ponca City News, March 19, 1944.

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launch a Civil Air Patrol chapter “Walter Is Appointed Air Patrol Officer,” Oklahoma Daily (student newspaper), June 1, 1945.

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taught a class on military communications “Civil Air Patrol Will Meet Tonight,” Norman Transcript, July 18, 1945.

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Contrary to the conflicting stories Some CIA documents say June attended Oklahoma University from 1944 to 1946: “Personal Record Questionnaire for Viola June Cobb” (form), August 9, 1967, RIF# 104-10111-10191. Other documents indicate she graduated: Harry Hermsdorf, “Contingent Recruitment of Viola June Cobb” (memo), June 6, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10123. Cobb claimed that she was enrolled at the school but never went to classes: “Attachment to Memorandum to Chief, Security Support Division,” June 29, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10078, p. 13.

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didn’t last long at college Katie McIntyre (Oklahoma University Office of Registrar) to the author, January 11, 2023.

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helping run the Civil Air Patrol Blurbs about June Cobb appearing in Oklahoma Daily (student newspaper) from 1944 to 1946.

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a new career—in aviation “Miss Cobb to Aviation Clinic,” Ponca City News, October 14, 1946.

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worked for Pan American airlines “Miss Cobb Takes Job with Aviation Company,” Ponca City News, December 16, 1948.

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for another aviation firm “Miss Cobb Leaves for South America,” Ponca City News, April 22, 1949.

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in the fall of 1953 Cobb and Rieker, Woman into Space, pp. 61–72.

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1952, when she turned twenty-one Jerrie Cobb, Solo Pilot (Jerrie Cobb Foundation, 1997), p. 47.

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CHAPTER 3: CATHERINE TAAFFE

3.1 Finding Taaffe

“Is it customary” Elsie L. Scaletti testimony, Select Committee on Assassinations, U.S. House of Representatives, May 19, 1978, RIF# 180-10131-10338, p. 67. Elsie Scaletti was an alias for Charlotte Bustos.

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Freedom of Information Act document Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, August 29, 2008.

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started the day Castro took office “Angel Santos Bush—Cuban Revolutionary Activities,” January 5, 1959, RIF# 124-90036-10153.

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until her cover was blown See Subchapter 3.6.

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June Cobb took over Harry Hermsdorf, “Operational Report on Contact Possibilities in Cuba” (draft memo), April 6, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10125.

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was suspected of spying Birch D. O’Neal to chief WH/4/CI, “June Cobb and Former Radio and Television Commentator in Cuba,” July 1, 1960, RIF# 104-10165-10173.

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unable to return to the Cuban island Jean Pierson, “New York Trip, ⅞ Nov” (memo for the record), November 9, 1960, RIF# 104-10175-10299.

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Castro and his bearded lieutenants SAC NY to FBI director, “Re: Cuban Revolutionary Activities” (FBI airtel), January 28, 1959, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, pp. 43–50.

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reported on the nuanced power struggles Ibid.; and John Newman, Where Angels Tread Lightly (Self-published, 2015), pp. 57–64.

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“secretary to Fidel Castro” “Biographical Data on June Cobb,” undated, RIF# 104-10248-10078.

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through covert meetings with the FBI Belmont to Donahue, “Relations with Cuban Army Military Intelligence” (FBI letter), January 21, 1959, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, p. 51.

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Hoover disseminated her observations J. Edgar Hoover (FBI director) to Catherine Taaffe (memo), June 19, 1960, RIF# 104-10261-10068.

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Taaffe would gamble away thousands Belmont to Donahue, “Re: Catherine Taaffe” (FBI letter), October 7, 1959, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, p. 174.

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a conversation about killing Castro New York to HQ, “Francisco Rodriguez Tamayo—Foreign Political Matters—Cuba” (FBI memo), July 27, 1959, RIF# 124-90130-10068, p. 5.

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selling millions of dollars in warplanes SAC NY to FBI director, “Re: Anti Fidel Castro Activities” (FBI airtel), December 28, 1959, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, pp. 209–12.

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assessing their military capabilities See Subchapter 3.5.

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disguising Enigma-based information Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing: The Enigma (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983).

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the first author to analyze Newman, Where Angels Tread Lightly, pp. 57–80, 259–76.

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“The Possible Double Identity” Dr. John Newman, “The Possible Double Identity of June Cobb and Catherine Taaffe” (video), presentation at “The Warren Report and the JFK Assassination: Five Decades of Significant Disclosures,” Assassination Archives and Research Center, Bethesda, Maryland, September 25–28, 2014, https://aarclibrary.org/​panel-jefferson-morley-dr-john-newman-david-talbot-alan-dale-moderator/.

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3.2 Three-Way Astonishing Similarities

Both were building an underground network For Taaffe: SAC NY to FBI director, “Re: Security Information” (letter), in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, August 29, 2008, pp. 154–55; and Legat Havana to FBI director, “Re: Anti Fidel Castro Activities,” September 24, 1959, ibid., p. 167. For June: “Letter to Dept. of State from J. Edgar Hoover,” April 18, 1960, RIF# 124-10278-10079. See also Chapter 7.

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hinged on one high-level source For Taaffe: SAC NY to FBI director, “Re: Anti Fidel Castro Activities” (FBI airtel), November 4, 1959, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, pp. 177–78; SA Dwyer, Miami, “Re: Catherine Taaffe” (FBI report), February 5, 1960, ibid., pp. 246–47. For June: “Meeting with June Cobb, Aide to Juan Orta” (memo), June 5, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10121. See also Subchapter 7.1.

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both lived in hotels For Taaffe: SAC NY to FBI director, “Re: Cuban Revolutionary Activities” (letter), January 12, 1959, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, p. 57; Legat Havana to FBI director, “Re: Anti Fidel Castro Activities” (letter), September 24, 1959, ibid., p. 167. For June: J. D. Esterline to Don Connors, “Audio Surveillance of AMUPAS/1,” October 6, 1960, RIF# 104-10175-10220. See also Chapter 8.

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in rooms whose numbers For Taaffe: FBI to Legat Havana (cable), June 11, 1959, no RIF#. For June: Harry Hermsdorf to chief WH, “Operational Report of Contact Possibilities in Cuba” (draft memo), April 6, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10125.

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hotel bills to Castro’s government For Taaffe: Donahue to Belmont, “Re: Catherine Taaffe (letter), January 8, 1960, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, p. 224. For June: “Biographical Data, June Cobb,” RIF# 104-10174-10132.

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Taaffe had previously worked with SA [redacted] New Haven, “Report of Investigation,” April 15, 1960, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, p. 554.

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helping them bust her fiancé’s “Attachment to Memorandum to Chief, Security Support Division,” June 29, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10078, tape 2, pp. 1–3.

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Taaffe stiffed him on an arms deal Jacob Esterline, “Progress Report—PBSUCCESS for the Period 24 April–3 May 1954,” May 4, 1954, CIA FOIA Reading Room, CIA.gov.

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June spied on him Jean Pierson, “Notes: AMUPAS/1 Trip to Washington, D.C,” February 20, 1961, RIF# 104-10175-10269. See also Subchapter 8.2.

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they investigated Taaffe’s family “Catherine Taaffe” (FBI report), February 15, 1960, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, pp. 284–91.

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Taaffe was a registered arms dealer Numerous FBI Reports from 1950 to 1960, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, pp. 9, 13, 23, 59, 159, 210, 466.

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head of South American deliveries Jerrie Cobb and Jane Rieker, Woman into Space: The Jerrie Cobb Story (Hoboken, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963), pp. 60-111.

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thirtysomething mother of six “Re: Catherine Taaffe” (FBI memo), January 12, 1959, p. 55, and SAC NY to FBI director (FBI airtel), January 19, 1959, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, p. 226. Catherine’s oldest child was an adult in 1959.

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with her second husband Huley Perry, interview by the author, October 10, 2019; and Jaime Taaffe, interview by the author, October 16, 2019.

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nowhere to be seen Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe. In this 564-page document on Catherine Taaffe dating from 1950 to 1964, her husband is never present for her deals, nor was he witnessed by FBI sources.

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military pilot named Jack Ford Jerrie Cobb, Solo Pilot (Jerrie Cobb Foundation, 1997), pp. 31–131.

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he put her in charge Cobb and Rieker, Woman into Space, p. 80.

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Both Taaffe and Fleetways For Taaffe: SA Hottel-Washington to FBI director, “Re: Catherine Taaffe” (FBI memo), August 2, 1950, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, p. 9. For Jerrie: Jerrie characterized Fleetways as a “prime contractor to USAF” in notes she made on Fleetways materials, Papers of Jerrie Cobb, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University.

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She used her warplane deals SAC NY to FBI director, “Re: Anti Fidel Castro Activities” (FBI airtel), December 28, 1959, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, pp. 208–11.

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has yet to be declassified The Taaffe FOIA documents are riddled with redactions, including entire pages that are blacked out. Taaffe’s FBI reports from 1950 discuss a recent deal where planes wound up across the iron curtain and in the hands of the Chinese (Lesar release, pp. 9–14). Jack Ford delivered U.S. warplanes to Chiang Kai-Shek in China in November 1949: “Bombers Make Handsome Gift,” Journal and Courier (Lafayette, Ind.), November 7, 1949.

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Jerrie was arrested for spying Cobb and Rieker, Woman into Space, pp. 69–72.

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she offered a fleet of warplanes SA Hottel-Washington to FBI director, “Re: Catherine Taaffe” (FBI memo), August 2, 1950, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, p. 9; FBI director to commissioner, U.S. Customs, “Re: Offer of Aircraft to Venezuela,” August 17, 1950, ibid., pp. 22–23.

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her dream of buying the plane Cobb and Rieker, Woman into Space, pp. 32–33.

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exhibitions for charity A sports reporter who witnessed Jerry [sic] Cobb playing softball described her “eagerness to learn as really something to see”: “Myers Cowboys Play Crack Girls Softball Team,” Las Cruces Sun-News (Las Cruces, N.M.), April 21, 1950.

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playing in an amateur league “Florists to Meet Queens Tuesday,” Daily Oklahoman, July 30, 1950; “Phoenix Tests Queens Tonight,” Daily Oklahoman, July 23, 1950.

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The timing of Jerrie’s plane purchase For Taaffe: SA Hottel-Washington to FBI director, “Re: Catherine Taaffe” (FBI memo), August 2, 1950, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, p. 9; FBI director to commissioner, U.S. Customs, “Re: Offer of Aircraft to Venezuela” (letter), August 17, 1950, ibid., pp. 22–23. For Jerrie: Cobb and Rieker, Woman into Space, pp. 32–33.

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3.3 Taaffe on the Timeline

business in sugar and plane sales SAC NY to FBI director, “Re: Anti Fidel Castro Activities” (FBI airtel), December 28, 1959, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, August 29, 2008, pp. 209–12.

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connected to Castro’s regime “The Cuban Situation” (notes from Hoover’s Luncheon), January 29, 1959, FBI Cuba 109-12-210, vol. 11, ser. 410–18, p. 14. Taaffe’s name is redacted in this document, but her New York address matches her address in the Lesar FOIA release.

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she left very few traces June flew back to Florida from Cuba twice in 1959 (March 1 and August 29), but for one of her trips to Cuba in 1959, June said she loaned her identity out to another woman. National Archives, via Ancestry.com’s travel manifest database. See also Subchapter 2.3.

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little tangible documentation Viola June Cobb testimony, Hearing Before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Internal Security, March 30, 1962, RIF# 104-10218-10384, p. 3.

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June did speak to the FBI June was interviewed by the FBI on December 2, 1959, but the original document is referenced only in other documents. See J. Edgar Hoover to State Department (letter), April 18, 1960, RIF# 124-10278-10079. June also spoke to the FBI in early 1960: “Biographical Data on June Cobb,” undated, RIF# 104-10248-10078.

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June always had an excuse John Newman conducted timeline research on June Cobb and Catherine Taaffe. See the discussion of the timelining pattern at 7 minutes in Dr. John Newman, “The Possible Double Identity of June Cobb and Catherine Taaffe” (video), presentation at “The Warren Report and the JFK Assassination: Five Decades of Significant Disclosures,” Assassination Archives and Research Center, September 25–28, 2014, Bethesda, Maryland, https://aarclibrary.org/​panel-jefferson-morley-dr-john-newman-david-talbot-alan-dale-moderator/.

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hospitalization in Cuba for agranulocytosis June Cobb, “Summary of Her Medical Records from First Attack of Tropical Fever,” received October 20, 1960, RIF# 104-10175-10203.

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the same phony excuse Harry Hermsdorf, “Contingent Recruitment of Viola June Cobb” (memo), June 1, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10123, p. 3.

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Taaffe popped up at a meeting SAC NY to FBI director (letter), October 16, 1959, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, p. 184.

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weeklong military competition Ivy Coffey, “Pilot Adds Another First to Her Career,” Daily Oklahoman, October 29, 1959. See also photos and films in Papers of Jerrie Cobb, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University.

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in touch with the FBI SAC Miami to FBI director, “Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo” (memo), November 5, 1959, RIF# 124-90135-10153.

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3.4 Exfiltrations

Tyndall World Wide Weapons Meet Ivy Coffey, “Pilot Adds Another First to Her Career,” Daily Oklahoman, October 29, 1959.

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spent four days training Photos and footage showing Jerrie training on interceptor jets, Jerrie Cobb Personal Photo and Film Collection; photos and newsreel footage in Papers of Jerrie Cobb, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University.

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unprecedented achievement for a woman Coffey, “Pilot Adds Another First.”

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the remains of his Cessna “Castro Leads Hunt for Leader Lost on Flight,” Gettysburg Times, October 30, 1959.

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Cienfuegos is mourned to this day “Flowers to Remember Camilo Cienfuegos,” Havana Times, October 28, 2013.

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“the most intelligent and” SAC NY to FBI director, “Re: Cuban Revolutionary Activities” (FBI airtel), January 28, 1959, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, August 29, 2008, p. 43.

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Cobb also listed Cienfuegos “List of Associates of Viola June Cobb,” undated, RIF# 104-10174-10076.

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Vicky Morgan Ibid.

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“pictorial essay” “Interview with Mary K. Murphy” (cable), June 5, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10122.

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the sister of William Morgan Untitled memo, in Reel 13, Folder F, “William Alexander Morgan,” May 7, 1959, p. 59.

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Many whose escape the agency Newman discussed the exfiltrations of associates of Catherine Taaffe at 15 min. 50 sec. in Dr. John Newman, “The Possible Double Identity of June Cobb and Catherine Taaffe” (video), presentation at “The Warren Report and the JFK Assassination: Five Decades of Significant Disclosures,” Assassination Archives and Research Center, September 25–28, 2014, Bethesda, Maryland, at https://aarclibrary.org/​panel-jefferson-morley-dr-john-newman-david-talbot-alan-dale-moderator/. See also John Newman, Where Angels Tread Lightly (Self-published, 2015), pp. 259–75.

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Lieutenant James Jabara, America’s top gun Coffey, “Pilot Adds Another First.”

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researchers have proposed two women A discussion of the AMCOO cryptonym can be found on the cryptonym database on MaryFerrell.org. See also Newman, Where Angels Tread Lightly, pp. 259–75.

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AMCOO traveled frequently into Cuba Havana to HQS, “Artime and Verna Left Havana,” December 15, 1959, RIF# 104-10162-10188. See also Havana to HQS, “AMCOO Arrived Hava from Tampa” (cable), November 10, 1959, RIF# 104-10162-10442.

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Catherine Taaffe, who is directly mentioned “Conversation with Reichhardt” (memo for the record), September 22, 1959, RIF# 104-10167-10083.

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traveled from Havana to Miami “Catherine Taaffe of New York City” is listed on Havana to Miami flight manifests on June 17, July 15, August 5, August 19, December 2, and December 9, 1959. National Archives via Ancestry.com.

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AMCOO exfiltrated several Cuban rebels AMCOO was central to the exfiltrations of Pedro Diaz Lanz, Manuel Artime, and Tony Verona. See Newman, Where Angels Tread Lightly, pp. 259–75. Taaffe was closely associated with Verona and was knowledgeable about his efforts to unseat Castro: FBI director to CIA director, “Mrs. Catherine Taaffe” (memo), June 16, 1960, RIF# 104-10261-10068. June Cobb listed Pedro Diaz Lanz as an associate of hers: “List of Associates of Viola June Cobb,” undated, RIF# 104-10174-10076.

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“What we didn’t do” Jerrie Cobb and Jane Rieker, Woman into Space: The Jerrie Cobb Story (Hoboken, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963), pp. 107–8.

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newspapers were reporting rumors “Cienfuegos Rumored in Tampa,” Tampa Times, November 18, 1959.

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3.5 A Bad Deal for Fidel

Taaffe warned the U.S. authorities SAC NY to FBI director, “Re: Cuban Revolutionary Activities” (FBI airtel), April 29, 1959, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, August 29, 2008, p. 123.

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“the opposition groups are convinced” New York to HQ, “Francisco Rodriguez Tamayo—Foreign Political Matters—Cuba” (FBI memo), July 27, 1959, RIF# 124-90130-10068, p. 5.

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scheme to kidnap an enemy SA Dwyer, Miami, “Re: Catherine Taaffe” (FBI report), February 5, 1960, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, pp. 246–48.

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trusting her with sensitive military contracts SAC NY to FBI director, “Re: Anti Fidel Castro Activities” (FBI airtel), December 28, 1959, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, pp. 209–12.

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a “busy-body,” a “nuisance” Belmont to Donahue, “Re: Catherine Taaffe” (FBI letter), October 7, 1959, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, p. 174; SA Dwyer, “Re: Catherine Taaffe” (report of investigation), May 16, 1960, ibid., p. 386.

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Hoover personally typed up In January 1959, Hoover hosted a luncheon at the State Department, where his report on Cuba relied heavily on the reporting of Catherine Taaffe. Her name is redacted, but her New York City address matches that in the Lesar FOIA: “The Cuban Situation” (notes from Hoover’s luncheon), January 29, 1959, FBI Cuba 109-12-210, vol. 11, ser. 410–18. See also FBI director to CIA director, “Mrs. Catherine Taaffe” (memo), June 16, 1960, RIF# 104-10261-10068.

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When Taaffe expressed displeasure “The Cuban Situation” (notes from Hoover’s luncheon), January 29, 1959, FBI Cuba 109-12-210, vol. 11, ser. 410–18, pp. 14, 17–18, 25–26.

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“usefulness” SAC NY to FBI director, “Re: Catherine Taaffe” (letter), November 25, 1959, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, p. 187.

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FBI launched an investigation SAC NY to FBI director, “Re: Catherine Taaffe” (letter), January 11, 1960, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, pp. 204–5.

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brokering the warplane sale to Cuba SAC NY to FBI director, “Re: Anti Fidel Castro Activities” (FBI airtel), December 28, 1959, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, pp. 209–11.

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Fidel’s cash-strapped government SA Dwyer, Miami, “Re: Catherine Taaffe” (FBI report), February 5, 1960, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, pp. 246, 295.

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twenty British Hunter Hawker jets SAC NY to FBI director, “Re: Anti Fidel Castro Activities” (FBI airtel), December 28, 1959, ibid., pp. 209–12.

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Five years before, Taaffe had stiffed Guatemalan “Progress Report, PBSUCCESS for the Period April 27–May 3 1954,” CIA FOIA Reading Room, CIA.gov. PBSUCCESS was the code name for the CIA’s efforts to unseat Arbenz.

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enemies immediately overthrew him David M. Barrett, “Congress, the CIA, and Guatemala, 1954,” Studies in Intelligence 10 (Winter–Spring 2001): pp. 23–31.

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and reported to the FBI SAC NY to FBI director, “Re: Anti Fidel Castro Activities” (FBI airtel), December 28, 1959, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, pp. 209–11.

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3.6 The Scar

Taaffe retreated to American soil “Catherine Q. Taaffe of New York City” is listed on the Havana to Miami flight manifest, January 15, 1960, National Archives, via Ancestry.com.

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she’d duped the Cubans into engineering Taaffe was immersed in the kidnapping scheme with the Cubans, but she was double-crossing her conspirators and informing the American authorities. Miami to HQS, “Rolando Masferrer; Juan Fernandez de Castro Rodrigeuz” (FBI teletype), January 27, 1960, RIF# 124-90090-10056.

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the FBI arrested the Cubans “FBI Smashes Plot to Kidnap Exiled Cuban,” (UPI) Fort Lauderdale News, January 29, 1960.

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“It was about 5pm” George Southworth, “Cubans Branded Her, Woman Claims,” Miami Herald, February 17, 1960.

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her FBI file described the same incident SAC NY to FBI director, “Re: [Redacted]” (letter), February 24, 1960, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, August 29, 2008, pp. 373–75.

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Southworth’s name made the list “List of Associates of Viola June Cobb,” ca. June 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10076.

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She would forever be identifiable Identifiable characteristics are not necessarily a barrier to a spy’s continuing work undercover. One of the most heralded spies of World War II, America’s Virginia Hall, had a wooden leg, yet she was reinserted behind enemy lines numerous times under different identities. Nazi wanted posters seeking the “limping lady” failed to result in her identification or capture.

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The story of CIA agent Harry Hermsdorf, “Operational Report on Contact Possibilities in Cuba” (draft memo), April 6, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10125.

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3.7 So Who Was Catherine Taaffe?

an enterprise she ultimately took over FBI report, January 12, 1959, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, August 29, 2008, pp. 55–57; Huley Perry, interview by the author, October 10, 2019.

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defrauding communist dictators Numerous FBI reports mention Catherine’s five children, 1959–60, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, pp. 226, 299, 301, 432, 517.

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her children were Catherine Taaffe’s six children were Huley Perry, born March 21, 1938; William Randal Taaffe, Jr., born May 1, 1945; Peter Dunne Taaffe, born March 28, 1946; Alexis Francis Taaffe, born September 7, 1950; James L. Taaffe, born April 14, 1952; and Thomas Bergen Taaffe, born May 24, 1957.

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Catherine’s oldest Huley Perry, interview by the author, October 10, 2019.

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second husband, Randall Dunne Taaffe William Francis Randal Taaffe married Catherine Quinby Perry on January 27, 1944, Florida County Marriage Records, 1823–1982, State Archives, Tallahassee, via Ancestry.com.

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defrauding his first wife’s family “ ‘Irish Count’ Freed on Long Probation,” Los Angeles Times, November 25, 1919.

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from plane parts to warplane deals Misc. FBI reports about Taaffe from July to September 1950, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, pp. 6–37.

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the sale of two hundred warplanes Ibid.

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Catherine was nine months pregnant Alexis Francis Taaffe was born September 7, 1950, in Florida, as listed on the U.S. Social Security Death Index, 1935–2014, Social Security Administration, Washington, D.C., via Ancestry.com.

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“crippled negro husband” SAC Baltimore to FBI director (letter), December 6, 1960, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, pp. 466–67.

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“Mata Hari” complex Mr. Donahue to Mr. Belmont (letter), October 7, 1959, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, p. 174.

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I reached out to Jaime Taaffe Jaime Taaffe, interview by the author, October 16, 2019.

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just like the one pictured George Southworth, “Cubans Branded Her, Woman Claims,” Miami Herald, February 17, 1960.

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Interlude 3: Manatees

Jerrie gave me a big hug Author’s trip to see Jerrie Cobb, Sun City Center, Florida, November 2–3, 2012.

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the giant, unmistakable shape See Appendix 1.

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CHAPTER 4: ELENA GARRO

4.1 The Core

the CIA transferred her to Mexico City Jean Pierson to Mexico City, “JMZIP Asset Traveling in Mexico,” June 6, 1961, RIF# 104-10175-10020, p. 1, para. 1.

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Her deployment to Mexico lasted “CIA File on Licooky-1” (memo), September 20, 1967, RIF# 104-10218-10076, p. 13.

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the Warren Report in 1964 Warren Commission Report (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1964).

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Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone Ibid., p. 22.

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less than fully forthcoming Philip Shenon, “What the Warren Commission Didn’t Know,” Politico, February 2, 2015.

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lone venture Warren Commission Report, pp. 299–311.

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she was visited by June Cobb (pseud. Joyce Pineinch), “Mexican Communists Who Had Contact with Oswald,” October 5, 1964, RIF# 104-10067-10324.

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Cobb offered to arrange Charles Thomas, “Lee Harvey Oswald and the Kennedy Assassination (Conversation with Elena Garro de Paz),” December 25, 1965, RIF# 104-10086-10053.

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tried to speak to Robert Kennedy John Newman, Oswald and the CIA (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1995), pp. 381–83.

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broken her cat’s legs Win Scott (pseud. Willard Curtis), “Memo on June Cobb,” November 25, 1964, RIF# 104-10195-10144.

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along with Elena Garro “Mexico City—Summary of Activities of HSCA Staff,” RIF# 180-10142-10147, p. 2.

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most sought-after witnesses “HSCA Interviews,” RIF# 104-10065-10102.

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Elena Garro was “nuts” The notation that Garro was “nuts” was circulated on a handwritten routing slip attached to this cable: “Legal Attache Mexi Interviewed Elena Garro de Paz and Daughter Elena Paz Garro November 1964” (cable), December 29, 1965, RIF# 104-10404-10320.

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4.2 The Unwelcome Witness

low-caliber “pygmies” Director to Mexico City, “CIA File on Licooky” (cable), March 4, 1966, RIF# 104-10218-10076, pp. 55–56.

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“unwashed exiles” June Cobb, “Summary of Licooky-1’s Activities” (memo), December 21, 1965, RIF# 104-10266-10161, p. 11.

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party as a guest of Silvia Duran’s June Cobb (pseud. Joyce Pineinch), “Mexican Communists Who Had Contact with Oswald,” October 5, 1964, RIF# 104-10067-10324.

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Silvia had told Garro Ibid.

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Garro was never sure See Subchapter 4.4.

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4.3 The Cat-Leg-Break Incident

whisked her to a hotel Charles Thomas, “Lee Harvey Oswald and the Kennedy Assassination (Conversation with Elena Garro de Paz),” December 25, 1965, RIF# 104-10086-10053, p. 3, para. 7,

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had just been arrested Ibid., p. 3.

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Calvillo warned her Ibid., p. 3, para. 9.

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cared deeply about the Kennedys June Cobb (pseud. Joyce Pineinch), “Mexican Communists Who Had Contact with Oswald,” October 5, 1964, RIF# 104-10067-10324, p. 1, para. 1.

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Garro had long concluded The day after the assassination, Garro went to the Cuban embassy and yelled “Assassins” at the Cubans. Thomas, “Oswald and Kennedy Assassination,” p. 2, para. 6.

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Warren Report was hitting the news “Warren Report Released,” Chicago Tribune, September 28, 1964; Cobb (as Pineinch), “Mexican Communists Who Had Contact with Oswald.”

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“several days” Win Scott (pseud. Willard Curtis), “Memo on June Cobb,” November 25, 1964, RIF# 104-10195-10144, p. 1, para. 1a; Thomas, “Oswald and Kennedy Assassination,” p. 2, para. 6.

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the agency provided Cobb “CIA File on Licooky-1” (attachment to dispatch), July 14, 1966, RIF# 104-10218-10078, p. 45.

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mutual friend Eunice Odio Thomas, “Oswald and Kennedy Assassination,” p. 3, para. 12.

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a longtime CIA asset “CIA file on Odio, Eunice,” RIF# 104-10177-10225. This document is twenty pages of redactions with almost nothing visible. Whatever Eunice Odio did is still classified sixty years later.

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Cobb got Elena and her sister Thomas, “Oswald and Kennedy Assassination,” pp. 3–4, para. 12.

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her agency pseudonym, Joyce Pineinch Cobb (as Pineinch), “Mexican Communists Who Had Contact with Oswald.”

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Elena was going to show up John Newman, Oswald and the CIA (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1995), pp. 381–82.

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try to speak to Kennedy Scott (as Curtis), “Memo on June Cobb,” p. 1, para. 2.

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June then offered to arrange Thomas, “Oswald and Kennedy Assassination,” pp. 3–4, para. 12.

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Garro now thought Cobb was planted Scott (as Curtis), “Memo on June Cobb,” p. 1, para. 1c.

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Cobb stayed back Newman, Oswald and CIA, pp. 381–82. Newman quotes Cobb directly from his interviews with her in 1995.

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She concluded the perpetrator Scott (as Curtis), “Memo on June Cobb,” p. 1, para. 1a; and Newman, Oswald and CIA, pp. 381–82.

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“And Oswald Was There” Cobb (as Pineinch), “Mexican Communists Who Had Contact with Oswald.”

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wouldn’t resurface for over a year “Elena Garro de Paz, Wife of Prominent Poet Mexican Ambassador Delhi Octavio Paz Lozano, Told Embassy Political Officer That She Met Lee Harvey Oswald Sep 1963” (cable), December 17, 1965, RIF# 104-10008-10109.

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The FBI then dispatched an agent SA Rolf L. Larson to Legat Mexico City (memo), November 23, 1964, RIF# 124-10079-10475.

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“extremely fearful in contacting” Ibid.

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Garro received another visit Scott (as Curtis), “Memo on June Cobb,” p. 1, para. 1a. Wichtrich’s CIA cryptonym was LIHUFF, and Calvillo’s CIA cryptonym was LICHANT. See the cryptonym database at MaryFerrell.org.

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Calvillo didn’t know that “Project Outline,” undated, RIF# 104-10218-10035, pp. 3–4, sec. 4; “LICHANT-1, PRQ Part 2” (dispatch), August 10, 1962, RIF# 104-10174-10154.

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“Subject: June Cobb” Scott (as Curtis), “Memo on June Cobb.”

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“afraid June Cobb” Ibid.

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4.4 The FBI “Fixes” the Party Date

A week after speaking Legat Mexico City to FBI director (letter), December 11, 1964, in “FBI 105-1307 Oswald Mexico City File, Section 15,” pp. 23–24.

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Oswald was known to According to the Warren Report, Oswald was in Mexico City from September 26 to October 3, 1963. Warren Commission Report (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1964), p. 299.

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a postmarked letter “The Following Information Was Supplied on November 24, 1964 by Mrs. Elena Garro de Paz and Her Daughter Elena Paz Garro,” December 11, 1964, RIF# 104-10404-10330.

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“fix the date” Ibid., p. 3 (on falsifying the postmark), and p. 4 (on fixing the date).

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The bureau did seek out Richard S. Clark to Legat Mexico (memo), December 2, 1964, RIF# 124-10029-10351.

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The FBI’s final report Legat Mexico City to FBI director (letter), December 11, 1964, in “FBI 105-1307 Oswald Mexico City File, Section 15,” pp. 23–24. See also “The Following Information Was Supplied on November 24, 1964” (FBI letterhead memo), December 11, 1964, RIF# 104-10404-10330. This report claims Garro narrowed the dates of the party to between September 30 and October 2, 1963.

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failed to consistently identify Legat Mexico City to FBI director (letter), December 11, 1964, in “FBI 105-1307 Oswald Mexico City File, Section 15,” pp. 23–24.

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didn’t include that important detail The notes from Garro’s second FBI interview are in two bundles: untitled, December 2, 1964, RIF# 124-10029-10351; and Richard S. Clark to Legat Mexico, untitled, December 2, 1964, RIF# 124-10029-10352.

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“somewhat bohemian” Legat Mexico City to FBI director (letter), December 11, 1964, in “FBI 105-1307 Oswald Mexico City File, Section 15,” pp. 23–24.

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Thomas authored a detailed memo Charles Thomas, “Lee Harvey Oswald and the Kennedy Assassination (Conversation with Elena Garro de Paz),” December 10, 1965, RIF# 104-10086-10057.

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sent Thomas out to interview Garro When the Garro information was first sent to CIA headquarters, Win Scott made a notation in the margins of the cable saying, “Please ask Charles Thomas if he’ll ‘follow-up.’ Get questions from Anne G.—Please let’s discuss, Thanks, Win.” “Elena Garro de Paz, Wife of Prominent Poet Mexican Ambassador Delhi Octavio Paz Lozano, Told Embassy Political Officer That She Met Lee Harvey Oswald Sep 1963” (cable), December 16, 1965, RIF# 104-10013-10089.

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Thomas fulfilled the assignment Thomas, “Oswald and Kennedy Assassination.”

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Mexico City station was now forced “Elena Garro de Paz, Wife of Prominent Poet Mexican Ambassador Delhi Octavio Paz Lozano, Told Embassy Political Officer That She Met Lee Harvey Oswald Sep 1963” (cable), December 16, 1965, RIF# 104-10008-10109.

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“She is also nuts” “Re: Legal Attache Mexi Interviewed Elena Garro de Paz and Daughter Elena Paz Garro November 1964” (cable), December 29, 1965, RIF# 104-10404-10320.

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station chief had been whispering N. Ferris, Mexico, to HQ, untitled (FBI cable), December 17, 1965, RIF# 124-10029-10366, p. 3.

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the chief would highlight Garro’s observations “Garro, Elena, Emp, Polit, Toldeo, Mario Monteforte, Assoc, Marxist Act” (CIA information report), May 26, 1967, RIF# 104-10220-10483.

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Charles Thomas killed himself “Charles Thomas, Foreign Service Officer, 48” (obituary), Washington Post, April 14, 1971.

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His career had stalled Philip Shenon, “Cynthia Thomas, State Department Widow Who Won Presidential Apology, Dies at 82,” Washington Post, March 20, 2019.

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he’d simply been “selected out” Myra McPherson, “State Department Widow Challenges System She Says Took Husband’s Life,” Miami Herald, January 16, 1972.

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“If [the Garro allegations] were ever” Charles Thomas to U.S. secretary of state, “Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico City” (letter and memorandum), July 25, 1969, RIF# 104-10012-10010, pp. 3–4, sec. 4.

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The penultimate conclusion came down James Jesus Angleton to Department of State, “Charles William Thomas. Reference to Elena Garro, the Complainant,” September 15, 1969, RIF# 104-10012-10009, p. 2.

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Eunice Odio, the poet José León Sánchez, “La Muerte de Eunice Odio,” La República, May 29, 1974. See also Subchapter 4.5.

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4.5 Elena’s Own Words

majority of Americans disbelieved James R. Phelan, “The Assassination That Will Not Die,” New York Times, November 23, 1975.

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being blamed for student unrest Reel 7, Folder Q, “Elena Garro de Paz,” RIF# 1994.05.31.13:07:52:000005, pp. 22–28.

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Cobb now also lived in Manhattan “Personal Records Questionnaire for Viola June Cobb” (form), August 9, 1967, RIF# 104-10111-10191.

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“[June] began to bring me jellies” Elena Garro (letter), ca. 1974, Elena Garro Papers, Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

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A twenty-page document “CIA file on Odio, Eunice,” RIF# 104-10177-10225.

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Odio died of suicide by poisoning Edwin Lopez and Dan Hardway, “Oswald, the CIA and Mexico City, aka the Lopez Report,” for the HSCA, January 2, 1979, RIF# 180-10110-10484, p. 278.

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4.6 The Star Witness

House Select Committee on Assassinations U.S. House of Representatives, Final Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979), p. 9.

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81 percent of Americans Darren K. Carlson, “Most Americans Believe Oswald Conspired with Others to Kill JFK,” Gallup, April 11, 2001.

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were immersed in their inquiry Dan Hardway and Edwin Lopez, “The HSCA and the CIA: The View from the Trenches and the View from the Top” (video), presentation at “The Warren Report and the JFK Assassination: Five Decades of Significant Disclosures,” Assassination Archives and Research Center, Bethesda, Maryland, September 25–28, 2014, https://aarclibrary.org/​aarc-conference-2014-the-hsca-and-the-cia-the-view-from-the-trenches-and-the-view-from-the-top/.

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Lopez eventually learned Edward Lopez to Mexican embassy, “Outside Contact Report—Madrid,” August 31, 1978, RIF# 180-10112-10254.

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He called that embassy Elena Garro de Paz to HSCA, “Outside Contact Report,” September 5, 1978, RIF# 180-10078-10164.

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“I would go to Washington” Ibid.

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Two days later Elena Garro de Paz to HSCA, “Outside Contact Report,” September 7, 1978, RIF# 180-10083-10183.

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“Ms. Garro de Paz stated” Ibid.

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Lopez should have already known By the time Lopez was seeking Elena Garro in September 1978, he was well into doing research for what would become the Lopez Report. There he painstakingly takes the reader through the most significant documents in the Garro story. Edwin Lopez and Dan Hardway, “Oswald, the CIA and Mexico City, aka the Lopez Report,” for the HSCA, January 2, 1979, RIF# 180-10110-10484.

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He had read the Cat-Leg-Break Document Lopez dissects the Cat-Leg-Break Document, ibid., pp. 209–10. The Cat-Leg-Break Document is Win Scott (pseud. Willard Curtis), “Memo on June Cobb,” November 25, 1964, RIF# 104-10195-10144.

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because she was in danger On Calvillo sequestering Garro, “Lopez Report,” pp. 218–20.

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He’d even seen the follow-up “Lopez Report,” pp. 225–26.

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The phone call where Garro said Mr. Schnee, State Department, to HSCA, “Outside Contact Report,” September 15, 1978, RIF# 180-10112-10255.

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she never picked up the plane tickets Ibid.

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4.7 The Lopez Report

devotes a full thirty pages Edwin Lopez and Dan Hardway, “Oswald, the CIA and Mexico City, aka the Lopez Report,” for the HSCA, January 2, 1979, RIF# 180-10110-10484, pp. 206–36.

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Lopez had to explain Lopez describes the failure to produce Garro, ibid., pp. 232–34.

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calling her “June Cobb Sharp” The name “June Cobb Sharp” appears in ibid., pp. 207, 229, 231, 255, 277, as well as footnotes 53, 58, 67, 80. In the Lopez Report’s footnotes, the names of the original documents are changed to include this new name, “Sharp,” when none of those original documents called her by that name. For example, the Cat-Leg-Break Document is cited as “Memo by Winston Scott Re: June Cobb Sharp, 11/25/64,” when the memo title actually says “Re: June Cobb,” and the name “Sharp” appears nowhere in that document.

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literally a thousand documents A search of the JFK document database on MaryFerrell.org conducted on January 18, 2020, yielded only two documents where June Cobb was referred to as “Sharp” prior to 1977. A similar search turned up 1,623 hits for “June Cobb.”

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looking for a “June Cobb Sharp” On seeking June, see Lopez and Hardway, “Oswald, the CIA and Mexico City,” pp. 229–31.

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“June Cobb” was listed “June Cobb, 4 Park Ave., 679-2972,” in the 1978 Manhattan telephone directory.

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“The CIA declined to aid” Lopez and Hardway, “Oswald, the CIA and Mexico City,” pp. 230–31.

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“afraid Cobb will break” Lopez’s analysis of the Cat-Leg-Break Document is in ibid., pp. 209–10. The Cat-Leg-Break Document is Win Scott (pseud. Willard Curtis), “Memo on June Cobb,” November 25, 1964, RIF# 104-10195-10144.

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seeking June Cobb HSCA investigators traveled to Mexico City in an unsuccessful attempt to interview June Cobb on August 7, 1978: “Meeting with HSCA on Mexican Interviews,” July 24, 1978, RIF# 104-10127-10252.

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Phillips gave the interview For Hardway’s handwritten notes from the Phillips interview, see untitled, August 23, 1978, RIF# 180-10142-10078.

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she was photographed In one photo, Jerrie is pictured posing in the Andes Mountains with friends after having scratched her name into a rock along with the date “August 1978.” Papers of Jerrie Cobb, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University.

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“We were getting cut off” Jeff Meek, “CIA Obfuscation Clouds HSCA Insider’s Efforts,” Southwest Times Record (Ark.), November 17, 2020.

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even filed a civil suit On April 28, 2019, Hardway, Lopez, and Robert Blakey filed a civil action against the CIA, stating that they believed the agency had been “interfering with their investigation and spying on them” while they were conducting their investigation on behalf of the HSCA. U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Dan Hardway et al. v. Central Intelligence Agency, Civil Action no. 17-1433.

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George Joannides, used his role Jefferson Morley, “Celebrated Authors Demand That the CIA Come Clean on the JFK Assassination,” Salon, December 17, 2003.

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told an audience Dan Hardway and Edwin Lopez, “The HSCA and the CIA: The View from the Trenches and the View from the Top” (video), presentation at “The Warren Report and the JFK Assassination: 50th Anniversary Conference,” Assassination Archives and Research Center, Bethesda, Maryland, September 25–28, 2014, https://aarclibrary.org/​aarc-conference-2014-the-hsca-and-the-cia-the-view-from-the-trenches-and-the-view-from-the-top/.

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Interlude 4: Finding the Babushka

flown in on a charter Jerrie often flew Life photographers to stories. Tom Butler, “Plane Talk,” Miami Herald, July 22, 1965; “Fly-In Fish Boil,” Green Bay Press-Gazette, July 16, 1966.

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a documentary about the assassination JFK: Death in Dealey Plaza, directed by Robert Erickson (Discovery Channel, February 2003).

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The Babushka was about thirty feet While many have mapped out the dimensions of the scene, I visited Dealey Plaza to conduct measurements and ascertain the location of the Babushka and to estimate the distance from her to Kennedy at the time of the fatal shot. Author’s trip to Dallas, November 29–December 2, 2012.

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Several women came forward A woman named Beverly Oliver wrote a book claiming to be the Babushka Lady, but the Babushka’s identity is still widely seen as an open question: Suzanne Raga, “Who Was the Mysterious Babushka Lady at JFK’s Assassination?” MentalFloss.com, November 22, 2016.

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CHAPTER 5: QJWIN

5.1 The Most Mysterious CIA Agent of All Time

agent code-named QJWIN An overview of QJWIN can be found on the cryptonym database on MaryFerrell.org.

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only dedicated assassin “Document Re: QJWIN,” undated, RIF# 104-10059-10223.

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agent was actively working The earliest document using the cryptonym QJWIN is “QJWIN Assigned Subject Ref” (cable), October 31, 1960, RIF# 104-10178-10079. In this one, QJWIN’s services were terminated: “Termination of QJWIN” (dispatch), April 24, 1964, RIF# 104-10150-10082.

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two leaders Church Committee, U.S. Senate, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders: An Interim Report (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975), p. 91 (for Castro), pp. 15–16 (for Lumumba).

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fruitless assignments over in Europe “Memo on QJWIN” (CIA memo), undated, RIF# 104-10178-10012, p. 2.

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CIA’s leadership consistently claimed Church Committee, Interim Report, p. 3 (plausible deniability), p. 256 (no leaders ever killed).

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to secure that very outcome See Chapter 6.

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We still don’t know QJ could be the country code for Luxembourg, but that identification is not conclusive. It could also be a signifier for those affiliated with this specific program.

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5.2 The Need for QJWIN

Fidel Castro was going communist SAC NY to FBI director, “Re: Cuban Revolutionary Activities” (FBI airtel), April 29, 1959, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, August 29, 2008, p. 123.

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“the opposition groups are” New York to HQ, “Francisco Rodriguez Tamayo—Foreign Political Matters—Cuba” (FBI memo), July 27, 1959, RIF# 124-90130-10068, p. 5.

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“thorough consideration be given” J. C. King to director of Central Intelligence, “Cuban Problems,” December 11, 1959, RIF# 104-10315-10031.

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Patrice Lumumba was a charismatic African Ludo de Witte, The Assassination of Patrice Lumumba (London: Verso, 2002), pp. 4–5.

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his first action would be Homer Bigart, “Congo Electing First Government to Take Over in Independence—Lumumba, Nationalist Chief, Urges Belgians to Abdicate Now, Not June 30,” New York Times, May 16, 1960.

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Jerrie was in central Africa Jerrie departed Miami for Africa on April 29, 1960, flying a specially outfitted high-altitude Aero Commander. See Georgia Moore Lapham, “Gold Coasting,” Palm Beach Post, April 27, 1960. She returned to Miami on a flight from Lisbon, as “Geraldyn Cobb, of Ponca City,” is listed on the Lisbon to Miami flight on May 19, 1960, National Archives, via Ancestry.com.

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she was often inside the Congo Photographs from Jerrie’s private collection, cross-referenced with “Join Aero Design and See the World,” Aero Design Newsletter, July 1960.

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Her monthlong journey ended Jane Rieker, “Up and Up Goes Jerrie Cobb,” Sports Illustrated, August 28, 1960.

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Lumumba announced his intention to break “Free Congo Now, Native Tells Belgium,” Chicago Tribune, May 16, 1960.

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The Shinkolobwe uranium mine Tanganyika, where Jerrie delivered the Aero Commander, shares a border with Katanga Province.

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fueled America’s Manhattan Project Susan Williams, “How a Rich Uranium Mine Thrust the Congo into the Centre of the Cold War,” Conversation, September 1, 2016. In addition to uranium, the Katanga ground held nickel and cobalt, which were also necessary for atomic bomb construction.

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Any country that controlled Stephen R. Weissman, American Foreign Policy in the Congo, 1960–1964 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1974).

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and, more recently Williams, “How a Rich Uranium Mine.”

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Protecting Shinkolobwe and Katanga’s “Lumumba Claims U.S. Plot over Katanga,” Intelligencer Journal (Lancaster, Pa.), October 3, 1960.

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had long been brewing Church Committee, U.S. Senate, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders: An Interim Report (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975), pp. 13–31 (brewing in Congo), pp. 71–74 (brewing in Cuba).

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Eisenhower made a muscular case Alan Duval Smith, “Eisenhower Ordered Congo Killing,” Independent, August 14, 2000. See also John Newman, “Ike’s Order to Kill Lumumba,” https://jfkjmn.com/​new-page-44/.

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project into Division D William Harvey (pseud. Daniel Presland), “Description and Photograph of Jose Marie Andre Mankel,” November 2, 1960, RIF# 104-10185-10015. See also Subchapter 6.5.

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Arnold Silver, the former Luxembourg Church Committee, “Draft Report,” September 8, 1975, RIF# 157-10014-10137. See also Chapter 9.

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5.3 The Woman in QJWIN

a smuggler named Jose Mankel The biography of Jose Mankel must be compiled from many disparate documents. Here are a few. His description: William Harvey (pseud. Daniel Presland), “Description and Photograph of Jose Marie Andre Mankel,” November 2, 1960, RIF# 104-10185-10015. His photograph: “Future Cover and Move to Germany” (dispatch), February 2, 1962, RIF# 104-10185-10349. His family and smuggling past: “Priority Traces Are Requested on Subject,” September 9, 1958, RIF# 104-10178-10017.

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Mankel had been working “Handwritten Draft: Project ZRRIFLE,” January 26, 1961, RIF# 104-10086-10279, p. 2.

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We know what he looks like Luxembourg to HQS, “Future Cover and Move to Germany” (dispatch), February 2, 1962, RIF# 104-10185-10349.

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name and description were sent Harvey (as Presland), “Description and Photograph of Mankel.”

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She employed him, instructed him See Subchapters 5.4, 5.5, and 5.6.

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“QJWIN is one of our” HQS to Luxembourg, “Lauricle ZRRIFLE/QJWIN” (dispatch), June 7, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10047.

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decade-long stint as a smuggler “Priority Traces Are Requested on Subject,” September 9, 1958, RIF# 104-10178-10017.

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Wanda’s faint presence In the earliest Mankel document from 1955, we learn that Mankel was in contact with a Mr. Vincent and his wife, Wanda Baran, in 1954 and that their contacts involved a nickel-smuggling incident being monitored by American authorities. “Re: Joseph Henri Vincent” (cable), February 5, 1955, RIF# 104-10079-10364.

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acquired by her through bankruptcy In the only other document in this 1955 series, we learn a lot more about the Vincents and their metals business and rap sheet. Page 1 is hard to read, but it tells us that Wanda married Mr. Vincent as his second wife and that his metals business was later transferred into her control. Page 2 enumerates the Vincents’ many brushes with the law and how Mr. Vincent and Mankel were arrested in a nickel fraud incident in 1954. Page 2 also states that Wanda is aware of her husband’s criminal methods and approves of them: “Report of Atomic Materials,” February 18, 1955, RIF# 104-10178-10015.

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Mankel smuggled almost exclusively In the fall of 1958, when the CIA ran traces on Mankel’s background, government files turned up his connections to the Vincents’ metals business: “There Are No Traces on Subject’s Parents or Wife” (dispatch), September 19, 1958, RIF# 104-10178-10018.

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all Wanda, sans the husband “Report of Atomic Materials,” February 18, 1955, RIF# 104-10178-10015, p. 1. The Vincent metals license was transferred into Wanda’s control prior to the date of this document, since the transfer was reported here as a past event.

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a strong preference for Soviet customers Vincent’s business had been selling strategic materials to iron curtain countries since 1951. Ibid., p. 2, para. 4a.

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buyer might think they had ordered In a criminal charge, Vincent’s business fraudulently promised nickel but delivered cast iron. Ibid., p. 2, para. 4d.

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he was an informant “Priority Traces Requested on Subject,” September 8, 1958, RIF# 104-10178-10017. By this time, Mankel was already in use as an informant in smuggling circles and was under consideration for use by the CIA as a double agent against the Soviets. See also Subchapter 5.6.

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cables from 1955 suggest “Re: Joseph Henri Vincent” (cable), February 5, 1955, RIF# 104-10079-10364. This Mankel document from 1955 states there was already a “Paris angle” to this operation. Later documents from 1959 and 1960 show that Mankel was reporting to a U.S. narcotics agent based in Paris. Taken together, these documents imply the same reporting structure was in place for the team from 1955 to 1960. See also Subchapter 5.6.

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escaped via Switzerland “Report of Atomic Materials,” February 18, 1955, RIF# 104-10178-10015.

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dealing in the exportation of atomic “There Are No Traces on Subject’s Parents or Wife” (dispatch), September 19, 1958, RIF# 104-10178-10018.

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multimillion-dollar delivery “Zweedse Danseres Hoofd van Belgische Kobalt-gang?” [Swedish Dancer Head of Belgian Cobalt Corridor?], Het Volk (Belgium), February 6, 1958.

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5.4 Was Wanda an Agent?

“clandestine shipment of atomic devices” “There Are No Traces on Subject’s Parents or Wife” (dispatch), September 19, 1958, RIF# 104-10178-10018.

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Congress authorized “Ike Signs Reward Bill for Atomic Smuggling,” Baltimore Sun, July 15, 1955.

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“seems to have been dropped” “There Are No Traces.”

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selling planes to his enemies Jacob Esterline, “Progress Report—PBSUCCESS for the Period 24 April–3 May, 1954,” May 4, 1954, CIA FOIA Reading Room, CIA.gov.

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Taaffe’s jet deal with Castro originated SAC NY to FBI director (FBI airtel), December 28, 1959, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, August 29, 2008, pp. 210–11.

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the same country where Wanda’s “Report of Atomic Materials,” February 18, 1955, RIF# 104-10178-10015. See also “Zweedse Danseres Hoofd van Belgische Kobalt-gang?” Het Volk (Belgium), February 6, 1958.

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Taaffe had long-standing connections SAC NY to FBI director (FBI airtel), April 29, 1959, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, p. 123. The name of Taaffe’s long-standing friend in the Cuban mining industry is redacted.

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So did June Cobb June Cobb maintained a close relationship with César Rodríguez, the head of Cuba’s Mining Institute. “Copy of Handwritten Note from June Cobb,” June 7, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10118. June also periodically received funding from Alfred Aufhauser, owner of Industrial Raw Materials, and she socialized with Armando de Peralta, founder of Peralta Shipping, a company that transported mineral ores by sea. “List of Associates, Viola June Cobb,” RIF# 104-10174-10076.

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Arnold Silver Silver, under his pseudonym James Rabney, interrogated Mankel in 1959, as evidenced by this document. (It does not name Mankel, but he can be identified from related documents in the series.) Name withheld (cable), May 4, 1959, RIF# 104-10178-10071. Silver was the Luxembourg station chief at the time of his interview with Mankel. “To Bern, the Hague and Luxembourg” (dispatch), June 17, 1959, RIF# 104-10178-10020. See also Subchapter 5.6. Silver left Luxembourg in May 1960 to join William Harvey’s division at headquarters.

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5.5 The Great Cobalt Bust

a syndicated report “Cobalt Smuggling Ring Is Cracked,” Odessa American, June 18, 1958. This story ran in only a smattering of American papers and a few in Canada.

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“Belgian Cobalt Corridor” “Zweedse Danseres Hoofd van Belgische Kobalt-Gang? Croughs Zou Schlects een Medeplichige Zijn,” Het Volk (Belgium), February 6, 1958.

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“Of only one type” Ibid.

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Wanda maintained her innocence “Wanda Baran Ontkent Hardnekkig, Elke Schuld,” Het Volk (Belgium), February 7, 1958.

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sentencing her to eighteen months “Das Urteil Im Kobaltschmuggelprozess,” Grenz Echo (Belgium), June 26, 1958.

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but no record exists Unlike Croughs, Wanda was released prior to trial, on the assumption she was not involved in the crime, even though newspapers were already reporting that the authorities had pegged her as the gang’s ringleader. “Die Kobaltsmuggleaffare,” Grenz Echo (Belgium), March 7, 1958.

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Jose Mankel was never mentioned A review of Belgian newspaper articles on the incident yielded the names of several characters involved in the crime, including drivers and others who assisted with the cobalt’s transportation and concealment, but Jose Mankel’s name was never among them.

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5.6 Heroin Tango in Paris

spectacular window into Wanda and Mankel’s In this two-document sequence, Mankel is referred to by the code name MARQUIS: FBN agent Andrew Tartaglino, “Report: Camile Croughs, Brussels, Belgium” (memo), October 12 and 14, 1960, RIF# 104–10185-10385. The code name MARQUIS can be proven to be Mankel in a series of documents from 1959, when the chief of station Rabney/Silver in Luxembourg loaned out Mankel to the FBN (RIF# 104-10178-10069). The agent supervising Mankel for the FBN was named Clarkson (RIF# 104-10178-10021). On October 12 and 14, 1960, Wanda and MARQUIS assist the FBN in a sting targeting a drug buyer named CHESLAK (RIF# 104–10185-10385). After that operation, Clarkson sent Rabney/Silver a report on the “special project” they were working on together, which was the sting on CHESLAK (RIF# 104-10185-10085). The documents about MARQUIS were then saved into QJWIN/Mankel’s CIA file. Sometimes in these documents, Mankel is referred to as the subject of the document number (OLLA)-470 rather than using his name. For example, (OLLA)-470 was a dispatch about Mankel (RIF# 104-10178-10017).

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Instead, Wanda Baran appeared Tartaglino, “Camile Croughs,” October 12 and 14, 1960. In both reports, Tartaglino tells how he was teed up for this sting, but the story is different each time. The October 12 document was circulated only within U.S. government agencies, while the second was also copied to INTERPOL. I believe Tartaglino was protecting his sources in the second document, which doesn’t mention MARQUIS/Mankel. Therefore the October 12 version is more accurate.

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“She made it clear” Tartaglino, “Camile Croughs,” October 12, 1960, p. 1, para. 5.

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deep cover agent I make the leap that Wanda was teamed with Mankel and working with the United States all along for several reasons. (1) She was always aware of the criminal component of her husband’s business, and she “approved”; the business delivered fraudulent, and therefore useless, atomic materials to the Soviets (RIF# 104-10178-10015). (2) After she took over the business, she stepped right into the same fraudulent dealmaking, as reported in “Zweedse Danseres Beschuldigd van Kobaltsmokkel Naar Rusland: Wanda Baran Ontkent Hardnekkig Elke Schuld,” Het Volk (Belgium), February 7, 1958. (3) Her name appears in Mankel’s circle from the very first Mankel CIA document, on February 5, 1955 (RIF# 104-10079-10364). (4) She teed up this potential drug sting to the benefit of the United States. And (5) she was never targeted by Tartaglino, even though her past nuclear sales to Soviet customers should have made her the target. Note: According to this series, a bust did not result from this heroin investigation. The diplomat insisted that the final transaction occur in East Berlin, while Tartaglino insisted it take place in a Western country, resulting in a stalemate. However, this entire operation has many similarities to a large heroin ring involving a diplomat that was busted by the FBN in the same time frame, which later became the basis for the film The French Connection.

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Like Wanda, June was tangled up “Attachment to Memorandum to Chief, Security Support Division,” June 29, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10078, pp. 40–47.

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June assisted the Narcotics Bureau Jack Anderson, “Meet June Cobb: She’s a Soldier of Fortune,” Parade, August 12, 1962.

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June was a federal agent Doug Valentine, Strength of the Wolf (London: Verso, 2004), p. 495. The FBN supervisor on the Herran Ecuador bust, George Gaffney, believed the woman who tipped off the investigation (June Cobb) had “CIA connections.” Chap. 13, n. 29.

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all had connections Wanda Baran’s employee Mankel was supposed to be QJWIN, and he went back into her business connections to recruit for the CIA’s assassination program (Chapters 5, 6, 7). June Cobb directly approached the first assassin the CIA mobilized to try to kill Fidel Castro (Chapter 7). Catherine Taaffe reported to U.S. intelligence that Cuban rebel leaders felt Castro should be eliminated: New York to HQ, “Francisco Rodriguez Tamayo—Foreign Political Matters—Cuba” (FBI memo), July 27, 1959, RIF# 124-90130-10068, p. 4. Taaffe also promoted an elaborate scheme to lure Castro to his death: SA Dwyer, Miami (FBI report), February 5, 1960, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, August 29, 2008, pp. 246–48.

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Interlude 5: Hall of Fame

she was thrilled and emailed back Jerrie Cobb to the author, September 28, 2012.

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“Are you telling me” Paraphrase of comments from organizers of the National Aviation Hall of Fame in late September 2012.

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the only personal remembrance National Aviation Hall of Fame Enshrinement Ceremony, Dayton, Ohio, October 6, 2012.

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first female chief of station “Eloise Randolph Page, Dies at 82,” Washington Post, October 19, 2002.

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CHAPTER 6: LUMUMBA

6.1 The Green Light

When President Eisenhower made the case Robert H. Johnson testimony, Church Committee, U.S. Senate, June 18, 1975, RIF# 157-10014-10070, p. 6. See also George Lardner, Jr., “Did Ike Authorize a Murder?” Washington Post, August 8, 2000.

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“In highest quarters here” Allen Dulles (pseud. Ascham) to Leopoldville (cable), August 26, 1960, attached to “Testimony of Bronson Tweedy,” October 9, 1975, RIF# 157-10014-10089, pp. 73–74.

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Jerrie blasted onto the pages “A Lady Proves She’s Fit for Space Flight,” Life, August 29, 1960, pp. 72–75.

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She claimed NASA wanted “Jerrie to Lose Wisdom Teeth,” (UPI) Daily Oklahoman, October 1, 1960.

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should best be accomplished Cable series attached to “Testimony of Bronson Tweedy,” October 9, 1975, RIF# 157-10014-10089, pp. 73–97.

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His boasts of support from the Soviet Union Brian Urquhart, “Character Sketches, Patrice Lumumba,” UN News, n.d., https://news.un.org/​en/​spotlight/​patrice-lumumba-brian-urquhart.

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America’s military-industrial immune system Church Committee, U.S. Senate, The Select Committee Assassination Report, Updated October 16, 1975, RIF# 157-10005-10297, pp. 1–91.

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Sidney Gottlieb, the agency’s technical services Gottlieb traveled to Congo as “Sid from Paris.” CIA director to Leopoldville (cable), September 19, 1960, attached to “Testimony of Bronson Tweedy,” October 9, 1975, RIF# 157-10014-10089, pp. 75–76.

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Leopoldville station was struggling to find On struggles to find candidate, see Leopoldville to CIA director (cable), October 7, 1960, attached to ibid., pp. 88–89.

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“Meanwhile, we considering dispatching third party” CIA director to Leopoldville (cable), October 7, 1960, attached to ibid., pp. 90–91. Note that Bronson Tweedy sent this cable under his pseudonym “Jadwin.”

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6.2 June Cobb Prepares

come under suspicion of spying Jean Pierson, “Telephonic Contact with Cobb: 5 Nov. 1960” (memo), November 5, 1960, RIF# 104-10175-10301.

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“pro-Castro,” “anti-Castro” Jean Pierson, “Notes: June Cobb: Possibilities,” ca. October 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10083.

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her own sterile phone line To chief Security Support Division, “June Cobb” (memo), September 30, 1960, RIF# 104-10111-10160.

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only other agent I found Stanton Ense to chief of Physical Security Division, “Artime (Buesa), Manuel, (Sterile Phone),” July 1, 1963, RIF# 104-10110-10249.

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“June Corwin” debuted The alias was first used in Jean Pierson, “AM-UPAS/1: Preparations for Boston Trip,” October 7, 1960, RIF# 104-10175-10217.

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involving a lie detector grilling “Cobb June, Viola, Security Data, Operational,” October 13, 1960, RIF# 104-10111-10225.

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monitoring her and her case officer “Synopsis: Accommodations Were Obtained at the Hotel Touraine,” November 22, 1960, RIF# 104-10111-10163.

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CorWIN’s rhyming and alliterative cousin “QJWIN Assigned Subjects Refs.,” October 31, 1960, RIF# 104-10185-10077.

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She ran interagency traces Sampling of background check documents: for June’s father, RIF# 104-10174-10013; for her brother, RIF# 104-10175-10082; for her associate, RIF# 104-10174-10012.

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investigation into her “relationship” “Re: Viola June Cobb; Determine Relationship Between June Cobb and Jerri Cobb” (memo), August 30, 1960, RIF# 104-10248-10074.

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Then, for a full five weeks For operational surveillance logs on June Cobb from October 12 to November 9, 1960, see Reel 11, Folder B, “CIA/DO/LA File on Viola June Cobb as Reviewed by Ed Lopez,” RIF# 1994.03.08.13:30:54:000007, pp. 74–239.

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trained in secret writing Jean Pierson, “A Separate Sheet Must Be Submitted for Each Agent,” September 10, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10095.

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taken to agency doctors “Administrative Officer Operation Division, Medical Staff,” November 2, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10084.

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donned new clothing Jean Pierson, “New York Trip, ⅔ Nov. 1960, Cobb” (memo for the record), November 4, 1960, RIF# 104-10175-10303.

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psychological exams Dr. Boyd L. Burris, “June Cobb” (memo), December 8, 1960, RIF# 104-10175-10293.

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took a polygraph “Cobb June, Viola, Security Data, Operational,” October 13, 1960, RIF# 104-10111-10225.

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luggage searched “Name Found in Cobb’s Baggage,” October 12, 1960, RIF# 104-10175-10213.

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purse rifled through Jean Pierson, “New York Trip, ⅔ Nov. 1960, Cobb” (memo for the record), November 4, 1960, RIF# 104-10175-10303.

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“Project Seal” was the code name “Information Re: June Cobb,” October 17, 1960, RIF# 104-10111-10132.

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“no closing memo required” M. Holder, “Office Memo: June Cobb,” November 16, 1960, RIF# 104-10248-10115.

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Five days later QJWIN arrived Leopoldville to director (cable), November 29, 1960, CIA FOIA Reading Room, CIA.gov.

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“Instruct Mankel have passport renewed” Luxembourg to HQS, “Oliver B. Altman, Inden Follows, Would Like to Meet Mankel, Fran 30 October” (cable), October 26, 1960, RIF# 104-10185-10079.

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a doctor’s appointment Jean Pierson, “New York Trip, ⅔ Nov. 1960, Cobb” (memo for the record), November 4, 1960, RIF# 104-10175-10303.

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She was seeing an agency physician “Administrative Officer Operation Division, Medical Staff,” November 2, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10084.

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“There are professional people” June Cobb, “Richard Gibson” (notes), October 29, 1960, RIF# 104-10175-10192.

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Gibson was critiquing William Federici and Sidney Kline, “The Hook Seized in Child’s Death,” New York Daily News, October 15, 1960.

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6.3 Timelining the Congo Ops

The gray box from November 21 QJWIN arrived in the Congo on exactly November 21, 1960, as evidenced by Leopoldville to director (cable), November 29, 1960, CIA FOIA Reading Room, CIA.gov. This arrival date matches other documents that discuss QJWIN’s flight arrangements.

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to December 11, 1960 The date QJWIN exited Africa can be disputed, but the financial reimbursal sheet listing their daily costs indicates QJWIN was reimbursed for hotels, taxis, and meals in Africa from November 21 to December 11, 1960: “Administrative Finance—QJWIN” (dispatch), September 30, 1963, RIF# 104-10185-10428. Several documents drafted after December 11 suggest that QJWIN remained in the Congo for an additional week, but since those conflict with QJWIN’s hotel and travel costs, I have marked them in Figure 6B as possible dates for an extended stay.

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in seclusion for wisdom tooth surgery “Jerrie to Lose Wisdom Teeth,” (UPI) Daily Oklahoman, October 1, 1960.

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“I have been hibernating” June Cobb (memo), December 3, 1960, in “CIA DO/LA File on Viola June Cobb as Reviewed by Ed Lopez,” RIF# 1994.03.08.14:03:26:750007, pp. 177–78.

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She didn’t even submit Ibid., pp. 177, 183. June’s case officer noted the dates she received the documents at the top of each page.

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Jerrie was the first to reappear Electrocardiographic record for Jerrie Cobb, Lovelace Clinic, Albuquerque, New Mexico, December 15, 1960, Papers of Jerrie Cobb, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University.

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June resumed her usual June Cobb, “Giving Update Based on Letter Received from Dr. O” (letter), December 21, 1960, RIF# 104-10266-10095.

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6.4 The Outside Agent

send QJWIN to Dakar QJWIN was expected to spend all twenty days in Africa in Dakar. William Harvey (pseud. Daniel Presland), “Description and Photograph of Jose Marie Andre Mankel,” November 2, 1960, RIF# 104-10185-10015, p. 3, para. 5.

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A vial of poison “Testimony of Bronson Tweedy,” October 9, 1975, RIF# 157-10014-10089, pp. 16–17.

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requested a high-powered rifle Leopoldville to director, cable attached to the end of Tweedy testimony, October 17, 1960, ibid., para. 4, pp. 94–95.

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A commando assault on Lumumba’s home Leopoldville to director, cable attached to the end of Tweedy testimony, October 15, 1960, ibid., para 3, pp. 92–93.

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find suitable thugs for hire Harvey (as Presland), “Description and Photograph of Mankel.” During the investigations, Harvey developed amnesia about penning this plan for the Africa mission, but not without first boasting that Dakar would have been the “logical place for asset spotting” for QJWIN. William Harvey, interview, September 14, 1975, RIF# 157-10011-10124, p. 5.

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she was moving ores and shipping “Wanda Baran Ontkent Hardnekkig Elke Schuld,” Het Volk (Belgium), February 7, 1958.

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New Wanda was Wanda Crickard’s name must be pieced together from two sources. One is the instructions Harvey sent to Dakar involving Mankel’s contacts with “Crickard”: Harvey (as Presland), “Description and Photograph of Mankel,” paras. 3a, 3b, and 5. The other is the agency’s response to congressional investigators asking for more information about “Crickard”: “Responses to SSC Request for Additional Information on Project ZRRIFLE” (memo), September 17, 1975, RIF# 104-10310-10014. Here the agency identified her as “Wanda Crickard.”

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supply him with money and instructions Harvey (as Presland), “Description and Photograph of Mankel,” paras. 3b and 5.

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define who QJWIN was The communication titled “AUDA-234” was a lengthy dispatch sent from Dakar station to headquarters on October 7, 1960. This document has not survived. We know Wanda was discussed in it because the contents of “AUDA-234” are referenced in Harvey’s instructional dispatch to Dakar a month later. Harvey (as Presland), “Description and Photograph of Mankel,” para. 3b. Specific numbered paragraphs in “AUDA-234” explain how Crickard can be contacted. In para. 2 we learn that Mankel wasn’t approached about taking the Africa assignment until October 19 and 20, two weeks after “AUDA-234” was drafted. This is a vital clue in discerning who QJWIN was, because on October 31, when the code name QJWIN was defined for Luxembourg and Dakar, QJWIN was said to be the person who was discussed in two prior documents, one of which was “AUDA-234.” Mankel could not have been named in “AUDA-234,” because he had not yet taken the job. It was Wanda who was discussed in “AUDA-234.” See “QJWIN Assigned Subject Ref.” (cable), October 31, 1960, RIF# 104-10178-10079.

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would involve a three-person team CIA director to Leopoldville (cable), October 7, 1960, attached to “Testimony of Bronson Tweedy,” October 9, 1975, pp. 90–91.

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dispatch raises interesting questions When Congress asked for more information about Wanda Crickard, the CIA gave them only nominal information about her employment record: “Responses to SSC Request for Additional Information on Project ZRRIFLE” (memo), September 17, 1975, RIF# 104-10310-10014. I matched Wanda Crickard’s employment record to a CIA agent who wrote about her career and deployments to Dakar: Elizabeth McNeill-Leicester, Dakar Diary: My 1960–62 Experiences While Serving at U.S. Embassy, Senegal (Xlibris, 2002). McNeill-Leicester’s memoir, written with CIA approval, would appear to preclude her from having played a central ongoing role in this assassination program.

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he knew very little William Harvey, interview, September 14, 1975, RIF# 157-10011-10124, pp. 3–4.

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6.5 William Harvey

William King Harvey was William Harvey testimony, Church Committee, U.S. Senate, June 25, 1975, RIF# 157-10002-10105, pp. 5–8. See also Bayard Stockton, Flawed Patriot: The Rise and Fall of CIA Legend Bill Harvey (Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2006).

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Richard Bissell, who asked Harvey Harvey testimony, p. 34.

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at Silver’s suggestion, the team recruited William Harvey, interview by Burt Wides, June 19, 1975, Miscellaneous Records of the Church Committee, 1975, RIF# 157-10014-10102, pp. 9–10.

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the inception of that assassination program Ibid., p. 2.

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“I do not know specifically” William Harvey, interview, September 14, 1975, RIF# 157-10011-10124, p. 4.

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“Harvey is not sure how much” Harvey interview by Wides, p. 5.

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Harvey’s November 2, 1960, dispatch William Harvey (pseud. Daniel Presland), “Description and Photograph of Jose Marie Andre Mankel,” November 2, 1960, RIF# 104-10185-10015, paras. 3b and 5.

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Harvey’s wrap-up memo William Harvey, “For: Finance Division” (memo), January 11, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10005.

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been prepared for his signature Harvey interview, September 14, 1975, pp. 4–6.

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“not a Staff D operation” Ibid., p. 1.

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Justin E. O’Donnell Washington to Leopoldville, “Please Advise Priority” (cable), November 7, 1960, RIF# 104-10185-10069. See also HQS to Luxembourg, “Oliver B. Altman, Iden Follows” (cable), October 26, 1960, RIF# 104-10185-10079.

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it was Bissell who selected O’Donnell Richard Bissell testimony, Church Committee, U.S. Senate, September 10, 1975, RIF# 157-10014-10093, p. 3.

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O’Donnell strenuously objected to the assassination Harvey interview, September 14, 1975, p. 1.

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traveled to Europe and recruited QJWIN Luxembourg to HQS, “Oliver Altman, Iden Follows, Would Like to Meet Mankel” (cable), October 26, 1960, RIF# 104-10185-10079.

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using the pseudonym Oliver Altman Ibid. See also Luxembourg to HQS, “Subject Now in Paris” (cable), October 27, 1960, RIF# 104-10185-10078; Frankfurt to HQS, “Altman Met Mankel,” November 2, 1960, RIF# 104-10185-10011.

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“tall, fat, red-faced” Luxembourg to HQS, “Oliver Altman, Iden Follows, Would Like to Meet Mankel” (cable), October 26, 1960, RIF# 104-10185-10079.

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According to a 1947 picture I found “Admitted to Capital Bar,” Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, August 23, 1947, p. 3.

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photos from his high school yearbook Justin O’Donnell in The Breidlin-Coughlin High School Yearbook, 1932, p. 44; Justin O’Donnell in The Breidlin-Coughlin High School Yearbook, 1931, pp. 68, 83.

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army enlistment records Justin Eugene O’Donell, World War II Draft Registration Cards for Pennsylvania, October 16, 1940–March 31, 1947, in Record Group, Records of the Selective Service System, 147, Box 1866, National Archives, via Ancestry.com.

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stationed in Turkey “J. E. O’Donnell Dies,” Washington Post, August 26, 1983.

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medically cleared for a tour Request for Medical Evaluation, October 20, 1960, in “CIA OP Files on William Harvey,” RIF# 104-10193-10076, p. 85.

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return flight manifest “William K. Harvey of Chevy Chase, Md.,” is listed on the Frankfurt to New York City flight manifest, November 5, 1960, National Archives, via Ancestry.com.

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signed with Harvey’s pseudonym William Harvey (pseud. Daniel Presland), “Description and Photograph of Jose Marie Andre Mankel,” November 2, 1960, RIF# 104-10185-10015, paras. 3b and 5.

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June was doing something very important “Operational Log of the New York Field Office,” November 2, 1960, RIF# 104-10111-10174, p. 1.

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arrived at her room at 7:20 p.m. Ibid., pp. 1–4.

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O’Donnell, who testified under the alias On the status of Church Committee transcripts, August 3, 1998, see “Church.018,” p. 12.

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Jerrie Cobb also reentered the United States “Jerrie M. Cobb of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma,” is listed on the Jamaica to Miami flight manifest, November 7, 1960, National Archives, via Ancestry.com.

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coughing, sighing, pulling drawers Reel 11, Folder B, “CIA/DO/LA File on Viola June Cobb,” RIF# 1994.03.08.13:54:000007, pp. 75–90.

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6.6 Catch and Kill

skip Dakar and travel directly “Please Inform Mankel He Should Proceed Leopoldville” (cable), November 4, 1960, RIF# 104-10185-10384.

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only six days to secure Leopoldville to director (cable), November 29, 1960, CIA FOIA Reading Room, CIA.gov.

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an escape along the same lines Ludo de Witte, The Assassination of Patrice Lumumba (London: Verso, 2001), p. 52.

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“great initiative, imagination, and courage” Leopoldville to director (cable), November 29, 1960, p. 1, para. 2, CIA FOIA Reading Room, CIA.gov.

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he would quickly reconstitute his power De Witte, Assassination of Lumumba, p. 52.

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“View change in location target” Leopoldville to director (cable), November 29, 1960, p. 1, para. 3, CIA FOIA Reading Room, CIA.gov.

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“Concur QJWIN go to Stanleyville” Chief of Africa Division to Leopoldville (cable), November 30, 1960, referenced in Church Committee, U.S. Senate, The Select Committee Assassination Report, Updated October 16, 1975, RIF# 157-10005-10297, p. 70.

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a surveillance plane loaned De Witte, Assassination of Lumumba, p. 53.

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a sworn enemy of Lumumba’s Stephen R. Weissman, “What Really Happened in the Congo: The CIA, the Murder of Lumumba and the Rise of Mobutu,” Foreign Affairs, July–August 2014.

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had been assisting QJWIN Leopoldville to director (cable), November 29, 1960, CIA FOIA Reading Room, CIA.gov. The redacted passage, with the word Mobutu written above, implies that QJWIN had unilaterally accepted assistance from Mobutu.

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jail in nearby Thysville De Witte, Assassination of Lumumba, pp. 52–57.

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Lumumba’s executioners consisted of Ibid., pp. 119–24.

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“QJWIN was sent” William Harvey, “For: Finance Division” (memo), January 11, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10005.

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6.7 Jerrie and “Jeri”

Jerrie piloted a new Aero Commander “Join Aero Design and See the World!” Aero Design Newsletter, July 1960. I have reconstructed Jerrie’s African destinations during her trip using photographs from Jerrie’s private collection, many of which are now held at the Schlesinger Library.

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That trip ended when she left Ibid.

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an American ally adjacent British MI6 spy Daphne Park, who was stationed in Leopoldville in 1959–61, admitted before her death that MI6 played a role in assassinating Lumumba to protect the high-value Shinkolobwe mine from Soviet exploitation. David Lea, “We Did It,” Letters, London Review of Books 35, no. 7 (April 11, 2013).

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she returned from Africa “Geraldyn Cobb of Ponca City, Oklahoma,” listed on the Lisbon to Miami flight manifest, May 19, 1960, National Archives, via Ancestry.com.

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it ordered two Colonial Office of Great Britain, “Tanganyika Under United Kingdom Administration: 1960 Report by Her Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland to the General Assembly of the United Nations,” January 1, 1961, p. 85.

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Jerrie delivered the first plane Photos from Jerrie’s May 1960 Africa trip show her delivering an Aero Commander 560E to Tanganyika bearing the tail number ZS-CNE. Jerrie Cobb Personal Collection, Papers of Jerrie Cobb, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University.

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and six weeks later Air Briton hosts a historical tail number registry database for Tanganyika, available at https://www.ab-ix.co.uk/​pdfs/​vr-taa.pdf. An Aero Commander 560E number ZS-CNE was registered on July 1, 1960, to the Tanganyikan government.

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Tanganyika’s second Aero Commander Ibid. An Aero Commander 500B (with no previously recorded tail number) was registered in February 1961 to the Tanganyikan government.

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she visited Africa on three separate Jerrie Cobb, conversation with the author, Washington, D.C., January 25, 2014. This conversation took place as we toured the Halls of Africa exhibit at the National Museum of Natural History.

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Rome station forwarded a dispatch “Forwarded in Attachment A in Translation and Original Language Are Three Reports” (dispatch), November 29, 1960, RIF# 104-10185-10061.

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“Jeri” wrote a handwritten message Routing slip dated December 20, 1960, and signed in the margin by “Jeri,” ibid., p. 13.

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“against the threats” James Truxton to Jerrie Cobb, December 30, 1960, Box 22, Folder 15, Collection 136, Records of Mission Aviation Fellowship, Billy Graham Archives, Archives of Wheaton College.

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Interlude 6: Ybor City

Jerrie booked a cruise package Author’s trip with Jerrie Cobb, from Tampa to the Cayman Islands to Cozumel to Tampa, by sea, December 1–7, 2013.

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both veteran cruisers Jerrie and Ruth told me they spent a year together on a cruise ship in the late 1970s or early ’80s and in the forty years since had taken several cruises a year.

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he’d helped the CIA Santos Trafficante testimony, Select Committee on Assassinations, U.S. House of Representatives, September 28, 1978, pp. 5:350–83.

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The mobster lived in Cuba Scott Deitche, The Silent Don (Fort Lee, N.J.: Barricade Books, 2009), chap. 9.

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was also in the heroin trade U.S. Department of Treasury, Bureau of Narcotics, Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1958), p. 22.

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CHAPTER 7: CASTRO

7.1 Throwing Switches

Cobb’s recruiting pitch to Juan Orta June Cobb’s series of memos to her case officer on December 21–22, 1960, are in Reel 11, Folder C, “CIA DO/LA File on Viola June Cobb as Reviewed by Ed Lopez,” RIF# 1994.03.08.14:03:26:750007, pp. 167–73.

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Orta ultimately accepted the job Hundreds of authors have written about this assassination attempt, including Hank Albarelli, Andrew Summers, Douglas Valentine, Fabian Escalante, Peter Dale Scott, and Gus Russo. In recent years, Orta’s family has also spoken of the episode. Gerardo Reyes, “From Aide to Assassin Plotter,” McClatchyDC, July 16, 2007.

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referenced a deadly poison Upas (noun) 1. An Asian tree, the milky sap of which can be used for poison on arrows; (in folklore) a tree alleged to poison its surroundings and said to be fatal to approach.

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“You know, he” June Cobb to case officer (memo), December 21, 1960, in Reel 11, Folder C, “CIA DO/LA File,” p. 172.

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June Cobb already knew Orta Harry Hermsdorf, “Meeting with June Cobb, Aide to Juan Orta” (memo), June 5, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10121.

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“Taaffe advised that the opposition” New York to HQ, “Francisco Rodriguez Tamayo—Foreign Political Matters—Cuba” (FBI memo), July 27, 1959, RIF# 124-90130-10068, p. 5.

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One of Taaffe’s best sources SAC NY to FBI director (FBI airtel), November 4, 1959, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, August 29, 2008, p. 178; SA Dwyer, Miami, “Re: Catherine Taaffe” (FBI report), February 5, 1960, in ibid., pp. 246–47.

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a position that Orta held “CIA Liaison Material—Manuel Adalberto Arques Diaz,” December 21, 1960, RIF# 124-90137-10079, p. 8.

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Taaffe and Orta were both embroiled Orta was involved at the initiation of the plot to kidnap Masferrer for Castro in 1959: Miami to HQS, “Masferrer” (FBI teletype), April 25, 1959, RIF# 124-90089-10276. Taaffe was immersed in the same kidnapping scheme to nab Masferrer, but she was double-crossing her Cuban conspirators and informing the U.S. authorities: Miami to HQS, “Rolando Masferrer; Juan Fernandez de Castro Rodrigeuz” (FBI teletype), January 27, 1960, RIF# 124-90090-10056.

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When Taaffe was unable See Subchapter 3.6.

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June Cobb soon resumed the flow Harry Hermsdorf, “Meeting with June Cobb, Aide to Juan Orta” (memo), June 5, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10121.

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assigned to her upon recruitment “Personality 201 File Request: AMUPAS/1,” June 7, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10005.

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“Dr. Orta” Viola June Cobb testimony, Hearing Before the Senate Judiciary Sub-Committee on Internal Security, March 30, 1962, RIF# 104-10218-10384, p. 24. See also June Cobb, “Submitted by June Cobb on Individuals in the Cuban Government Known to Her” (handwritten notes), June 7, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10200.

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moving guns and personnel SAC Miami (FBI memo), November 13, 1961, in FBI FOIA on Juan Orta, obtained by A. J. Weberman, August 7, 1979, p. 18.

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law enforcement was well aware “CIA Liaison Material—Manuel Adalberto Arques Diaz,” December 21, 1960, RIF# 124-90137-10079, entire document, esp. pp. 1, 5–8.

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a long rap sheet On perjury, see Mr. Belmont to Mr. Boardman (FBI letter), March 18, 1957, in FBI FOIA on Orta obtained by A. J. Weberman, p. 124. On gun-running, see SAC Miami (FBI memo), November 13, 1961, ibid., pp. 17–18.

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“Christmas gift” Arthur Johnsey, “U.S. Gives ‘Christmas Gifts’ to Five Castro Men,” Miami Herald, December 22, 1959.

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flap that was making headlines “Orta Denies Plot,” New York Times, March 30, 1960.

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7.2 Cobb Enlists Orta

memos touted her access Harry Hermsdorf, “Meeting with June Cobb, Aide to Juan Orta” (memo), June 5, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10121.

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Years later Orta even admitted Information on June Cobb in Orta, “Biographic” (dispatch), February 18, 1965, RIF# 104-10174-10131. See also “Folder on Cobb, Viola June, Vol. VII,” RIF# 104-10266-10026, pp. 45–48.

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Cobb’s overtures to Orta Jean Pierson, “Telephonic Contact with Cobb: 5 Nov. 1960” (memo), November 5, 1960, RIF# 104-10175-10301.

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“[Cobb] was requested to prepare” Jean Pierson, “Telephonic Contact with Cobb: 10:10AM” (memo), November 9, 1960, RIF# 104-10175-10298.

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“Now, what is very important” Reel 11, Folder C, “CIA DO/LA File on Viola June Cobb as Reviewed by Ed Lopez,” RIF# 1994.03.08.14:03:26:750007, p. 1 (Cobb’s December 21, 1960, memo to her case officer), p. 172 (throwing switches), p. 2 (Cobb’s December 21, 1960, memo), p. 173 (with Cubans for Cuba).

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“I know him well enough” Cobb to her case officer (memo), December 22, 1960, ibid., p. 167.

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“It should sound like me” Cobb’s handwritten note attached to her Orta letter draft, ibid., p. 170.

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“As a family man” Cobb’s translation of her letter to Orta, enclosed in her memo to her case officer, December 21–22, 1960, ibid., p. 171.

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he defected to the Venezuelan embassy Ruby Hart Phillips, “Ex-Aide of Castro in Embassy Haven,” New York Times, April 14, 1961.

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then traveled to Mexico “Castro Ex-Aide Quits Embassies, Flees to Mexico,” St. Louis Dispatch, October 23, 1964.

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awaiting him in the United States “Ex-Castro Aide Arrives,” Orlando Sentinel, February 5, 1965.

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like those whisked to Florida Director of security to WH chief, “Memo: Request for Assistance in the Cases of Manuel Francis Artime Buesa and Manuel Antonio Verona,” January 19, 1960, RIF# 104-10110-10259. See also Subchapter 3.4.

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for his “cooperation” Jean Pierson, “Project AMDOFF/1” (memo for the record), February 28, 1961, RIF# 104-10175-10257. AMDOFF is the cryptonym for Juan Orta. Doff is a verb meaning “to toss off or get rid of something.”

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7.3 The Mob Did It

the Senate formed the Church Committee Nicholas M. Horrock, “Senators Weigh Public Hearings on Assassinations,” New York Times, March 11, 1975.

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“Initially they” James P. O’Connell testimony, Church Committee, U.S. Senate, May 30, 1975, RIF# 157-10002-10148, pp. 6–20.

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to headquarters after she drafted it Jean Pierson, “Telephonic Contact with Cobb: 10:10AM” (memo), November 9, 1960, RIF# 104-10175-10298. The OS in this document is the Office of Security.

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O’Connell represented himself O’Connell testimony, Church Committee, May 30, 1975.

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handed his department the job Colonel Sheffield Edwards testimony, Church Committee, May 30, 1975, pp. 2–4.

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the mob would be a good partner The CIA officers who testified to the Church Committee disagreed on who suggested the use of mobsters. O’Connell testified it was Robert Maheu’s idea: O’Connell testimony, Church Committee, May 30, 1975, RIF# 157-10002-10048, pp. 15–16. But Maheu testified that O’Connell already knew Johnny Roselli. Maheu testimony, Church Committee, July 29, 1975, RIF# 157-10011-10047, pp. 6–7.

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Roselli quickly brought on board O’Connell claims he only learned after the first meeting that the people he was dealing with were mobsters. O’Connell testimony, Church Committee, May 30, 1975, pp. 27–29.

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These criminals then suggested Orta O’Connell’s version says Roselli and company found Orta. Ibid., p. 19. Maheu says Giancana found Orta. Maheu testimony, Church Committee, July 29, 1975, p. 19.

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the poison pills for the job O’Connell testimony, Church Committee, May 30, 1975, pp. 42–44.

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Trafficante volunteered the use Ibid., pp. 28–30.

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offered to personally deliver From O’Connell’s Rockefeller Commission interview, given two weeks prior to the Church Committee: “Interview with James P. O’Connell,” Rockefeller Commission, May 17, 1975, RIF# 178-10002-10329, p. 10.

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a seminal meeting occurred The participants told wildly differing versions of the pill handoff. I have listed the people most often mentioned as being present, the place most frequently cited as the location, and the date that the senators doing the questioning homed in on. During the questioning of Maheu, the committee estimated the date as March 12, 1961. Robert Maheu testimony, Church Committee, September 23, 1975, pp. 14–15.

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in some versions of the tale Santos Trafficante testimony, “1 October 1976, Interview and Meeting Summary,” October 1, 1976, RIF# 157-10014-10066.

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In other versions, Sam O’Connell interview, Rockefeller Commission, May 17, 1975, p. 10.

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have gotten “cold feet” Ibid., p. 11.

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and defected to the Venezuelan embassy R. Hart Phillips, “Ex-Aide of Castro in Embassy Haven,” New York Times, April 14, 1961.

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Orta agreed to deliver After Orta failed, some versions of this story say the team tried again with Tony Verona in place of Orta, and the plot failed a second time.

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Giancana was the first Philip Wattley and Weldon Whisler, “Cops: Giancana Slain to Silence Him,” New York Daily News, July 21, 1975.

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Roselli’s testimony was ongoing Roselli’s first deposition before Congress was taken on June 24, 1975. Giancana was killed on July 19, 1975, after which Roselli testified two more times before he disappeared on July 28, 1976.

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his corpse was found Merwin Sigale, “Castro Plotter Roselli Found Slain in Bay,” New York Daily News, August 9, 1976.

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Trafficante testified three times For Trafficante’s first testimony from October 1, 1976, no transcript was kept and only a summary remains. His immunized November 14, 1977, testimony was released only upon pressure from JFK researchers in 2008. His third testimony on September 28, 1978, was the most widely seen version of the three.

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all of which contradicted During Trafficante’s testimony, the section of the CIA inspector general’s report that his testimony contradicted was read to him. He stuck to his version. Santos Trafficante testimony, Select Committee on Assassinations, U.S. House of Representatives, September 27, 28, and December 29, 1978, p. 5:363.

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a few meetings as a translator Santos Trafficante testimony, Select Committee on Assassinations, U.S. House of Representatives, November 14, 1977, RIF# 180-10118-10137, p. 11 (Roselli was with the CIA), pp. 12, 28 (Trafficante was only a translator).

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started telling that story only after On April 18, 1961, Robert Maheu spoke to the FBI and linked his involvement with Roselli on a prior wire-tapping incident to the CIA’s anti-Castro activities. WFO-subject to FBI director, “Arthur James Balletti” (airtel), April 20, 1961, RIF# 124-10216-10041. Two weeks later CIA security officer Sheffield Edwards confirmed Maheu’s account in “FBI Memorandum Belmont to Parsons; Arthur James Balletti,” May 4, 1961, RIF# 124-10216-10045. Both of these admissions went into the record after Orta’s defection on April 12, 1961.

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7.4 Cobb’s Delivery to Orta

“Subj [Cobb] was requested to suggest” Jean Pierson, “Telephonic Contact with Cobb: 10:10AM” (memo), November 9, 1960, RIF# 104-10175-10298.

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her “taxi stand” group in Havana In an undated note in the Orta series, Cobb mentions sending in gifts and messages to a taxi driver at INRA named “Rafael” and to his relatives in the “Hoyos” family. She also says she intends to send additional U.S. emissaries once she has established this pathway. See Cobb’s memo to case officer, undated but in same series as Orta letter, in Reel 11, Folder C, “CIA DO/LA File on Viola June Cobb as Reviewed by Ed Lopez,” RIF# 1994.03.08.14:03:26:750007, p. 175.

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a highly trusted cadre This slip of paper was written by Jean Pierson, as identified by her handwriting, and was attached to a letter “Rafael” sent June on February 5, 1961. “Envelope Addressed to June Cobb,” RIF# 104-10175-10275.

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through “Gesto” and his network When Cobb gets a thank-you letter for the items she sent “Rafael,” the response comes from “Rafael Gesto,” of the taxi group. It can be read in the original Spanish: Reel 11, Folder C, “CIA DO/LA File,” pp. 72–73; or by reading June Cobb’s translation of the letter: June Cobb, “Translation: Attached Is Cobb Translation of Letter from Rafael Gesto,” February 5, 1961, RIF# 104-10175-10276.

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have couriered deliveries Santos Trafficante testimony, “Interview and Meeting Summary,” October 1, 1976, RIF# 157-10014-10066, pp. 2–4.

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supplement their in-person meetings “Field Double Agent Guide,” August 1960, RIF# 104-10213-10058, p. 64.

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possible double agent operations WH/3 to CI/Approval, “Request for Approval” (form), September 20, 1962, RIF# 104-10175-10360.

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taking a trip to Caracas June Cobb, “Informing Change in Travel Plans” (handwritten note), RIF# 104-10174-10171. June’s return date to Puerto Rico was supposed to be January 28 or 29.

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previously used Caracas “Subject: Conference on AMUPAS-1 Case,” September 15, 1960, RIF# 104-10175-10080.

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ostensibly made the trip For notes from the trip, see June Cobb, “Juan José Arévalo President of Guatemala 1945–1951” (notes), RIF# 104-10175-10266.

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during her weeklong stay “Transcript from Taped Interview with June Cobb and Alejandro Bermudez,” RIF# 104-10174-10179. Bermudez was a member of a team of Nicaraguan rebels who often resided in Cuba and with whom Cobb was in covert contact.

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extending her trip June’s original return date from this trip had been January 28 or 29, but she wound up extending her trip. “June Cobb of Ponca City, Oklahoma,” is listed on the Caracas to San Juan flight manifest, February 9, 1961, National Archives, via Ancestry.com.

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confirming his receipt Rafael Gesto to June Cobb, February 5, 1961, in Reel 11, Folder C, “CIA DO/LA File,” pp. 72–73. For June Cobb’s translation of the letter, see June Cobb, “Translation: Attached Is Cobb Translation of Letter from Rafael Gesto,” February 5, 1961, RIF# 104-10175-10276.

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to be used as a recognition signal Recognition signal slip, “CIA DO/LA File,” p. 75. Cobb’s translation of the slip and explanation of use is on pp. 68–69, and the case officer’s explanation of the slip is on p. 77.

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“could be used to identify” Slip written in the handwriting of Jean Pierson, “Envelope Addressed to June Cobb,” RIF# 104-10175-10275.

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“Cobb had been introduced” Jean Pierson, “Telephonic Conversation with Cobb—23 Feb 61” (memo), February 23, 1961, RIF# 104-10175-10258.

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borrowed an existing person’s name On April 27, 1961, Cobb told Jean Pierson that she was worried that a “book of Gregorio’s” that she had mailed to headquarters had not yet arrived. Pierson instructed the security office to look for it: Jean Pierson, “Contacted Cobb to Give Her the Titles” (one of four memos for the record), March 30, April 11 and 27, and May 3, 1961, RIF# 104-10174-10077, p. 2. Days later headquarters responded to Cobb in the form of a letter ostensibly written by Marxist author Fritz Pappenheim, who informed Cobb that “Gregorio’s book has not yet arrived here.” Fritz Pappenheim to June Cobb, May 9, 1961, RIF# 104-10266-10129. It is unclear if Pappenheim willingly participated or if his name was used without his permission. In instances where Cobb’s father and Jorge Losada’s names were used similarly, they appear to have been used wittingly.

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Cobb’s “commo channel” Jean Pierson, “AMUPAS/1—Preparations for Boston Trip,” October 7, 1960, RIF# 104-10175-10217.

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O’Connell’s version of the story James P. O’Connell, interview, Rockefeller Commission, May 17, 1975, RIF# 178-10002-10329, p. 10.

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“Contact was made with” Jean Pierson, “Contact Was Made with Cobb at 9:45 This Date” (two memos), March 1 and 9, 1960, RIF# 104-10175-10256.

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“In a telephonic conversation” Ibid.

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based on the various testimonies Robert Maheu testimony, Church Committee, U.S. Senate, September 23, 1975, RIF# 157-10011-10049, pp. 14–15.

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“A call from Sam FREEDMAN” Jean Pierson, “Cobb Was Contacted Telephonically at 17:50 p.m. on March 27” (memo for the record), March 28, 1961, RIF# 104-10175-10222.

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“1) This file contains the entire AMDOFF/1” Jean Pierson to William Harvey, “AMDOFF/1” (memo), March 29, 1961, RIF# 104-10175-10221.

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Cobb carefully cut out “Press Article on Defection of Orta—Attached to Stationery from the Commander Hotel,” April 14, 1961, RIF# 104-10266-10137.

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“Cobb received word” Jean Pierson, “Contacted Cobb to Give Her the Titles” (four memos by Pierson), March 30, April 11 and 27, and May 3, 1961, RIF# 104-10174-10077, p. 2.

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“Since I could not” June Cobb, “Note: Cuba—Since I Couldn’t Very Well Do It from Rose’s House,” May 1961, RIF# 104-10175-10452.

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Could Cobb’s “Sam” be code Throughout the mob delivery timeline, June Cobb reports to her case officer on her dealings with a number of female friends whose names could be code for Roselli, including “Rosalie Butler” and “Rose Simenow.” These are real people whose biographies are typed up in the Cobb file.

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7.5 Where Was QJWIN?

prepare for a scouting trip HQS to Luxembourg, “Inform QJWIN We Planning Use Him Leopoldville Indefinitely as Discussed with Him There” (cable), January 19, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10055. The title and first sentence of this cable suggest that QJWIN would stay in Leopoldville permanently (even though QJWIN had already left), but later in the cable, QJWIN was told to be available for a trip to Italy on January 27 and was departing from Luxembourg.

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no longer be making contact HQS to Luxembourg, “Purpose Trip Is Spot Assess Recommend Same Types QJWIN Was to Find in Dakar” (cable), January 23, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10054.

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QJWIN’s prearranged telephone contacts Leopoldville to Luxembourg, “Please Advise Soonest ETA QJWIN” (cable), November 11, 1960, RIF# 104-10185-10382. See also Leopoldville to director, “Fail to Understand Why Next Meeting Not Until 16 or 17 Nov,” November 12, 1960, RIF# 104-10185-10379; and Luxembourg to HQS, “QJWIN Will Depart 0800 Hours,” November 13, 1960, RIF# 104-10185-10377.

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didn’t even know Luxembourg to HQS, “ZRRIFLE/QJWIN—The Security Breach” (dispatch), July 7, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10356.

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was being dismantled Luxembourg to HQS, “QJWIN Termination,” April 24, 1964, RIF# 104-10054-10104.

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“one to two” week trip HQS to Luxembourg, “Inform QJWIN We Planning to Use Him in Leopoldville Indefinitely,” January 19, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10055; Luxembourg to HQS, “QJWIN Available Go Italy,” January 21, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10056; HQS to Luxembourg, “Purpose Trip Is Spot Assess Recommend Same Types QJWIN Was to Find in Dakar” (cable), January 23, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10054.

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She was scheduled to go June Cobb, “Informing Change in Travel Plans” (handwritten note), RIF# 104-10174-10171. This was Cobb’s plan prior to departure, but this plan would change again.

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from Caracas to Puerto Rico “June Cobb of Ponca City, Oklahoma,” is listed on the Caracas to San Juan flight manifest, February 9, 1961, National Archives, via Ancestry.com.

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mailed her case officer Cobb’s letter and envelope postmarked San Juan, Puerto Rico, February 9, 1961, in Reel 11, Folder C, “CIA DO/LA File on Viola June Cobb as Reviewed by Ed Lopez,” RIF# 1994.03.08.14:03:26:750007, pp. 65, 66, 67.

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QJWIN’s trip to “Milan” matches Luxembourg to HQS, “QJWIN Briefed and Funded for Two Week Trip” (cable), January 26, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10373.

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wrapped up on February 8 Luxembourg to HQS, “QJWIN Trip to Italy” (dispatch), March 3, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10370, p. 2, para. 6. QJWIN had to circle back for another meeting on February 19, but this first trip concluded on February 8.

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a recognition signal Recognition signal slip, in Reel 11, Folder C, “CIA DO/LA File,” p. 75. Cobb’s translation of the slip and explanation of its use are on pp. 68–69. The case officer’s explanation of the slip is on p. 77.

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“Set up a means of contact” HQS to Luxembourg, “Purpose Trip Is Spot Assess Recommend Same Types QJWIN Was to Find in Dakar” (cable), January 23, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10054.

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Like June Cobb’s trip, QJWIN’s trip For the recognition signal, see Luxembourg to HQS, “QJWIN Trip to Italy” (dispatch) March 3, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10370, p. 2, para. 6. QJWIN’s recognition signal was said to be a torn hundred-lira note, while Cobb’s recognition signal was a handwritten slip.

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7.6 Blimps and Barracudas

gangsters were usually met James P. O’Connell testimony, Church Committee, U.S. Senate, May 30, 1975, RIF# 157-10002-10148. See also Robert Maheu testimony, Church Committee, U.S. Senate, July 29, 1975, RIF# 157-10011-10047.

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Miami’s Fontainebleau hotel A number of investigative leads pointed to a March 12, 1961, meeting at the Fountainebleau, including this one: Church Committee, U.S. Senate, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders: An Interim Report (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975), pp. 81–82. See also Subchapter 7.3.

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Jerrie was in Miami preparing Jerrie attended an aviation event in Gainesville, Florida, on March 2–4, 1961. “Space Miss Set to Fly Anywhere,” Fort Lauderdale News, March 4, 1961. Before this event, she visited the home of Jane Rieker in the Miami region, according to a news clipping from the West Palm Beach Post, in Papers of Jerrie Cobb, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University. For June’s whereabouts: Jean Pierson, “Contact Was Made with Cobb at 9:45 This Date” (two memos), March 1 and 9, 1960, RIF# 104-10175-10256.

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She flew the Goodyear blimp For Jerrie: Morris McLemore, “The Lady Driver Went Up in the Air,” Miami News, March 8, 1961. For June: Jean Pierson, “Contact Was Made with Cobb at 9:45 This Date” (two memos), March 1 and 9, 1960, RIF# 104-10175-10256.

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also arrived in Miami For Jerrie: “Off to Florida,” Tribune-Review (Bethany, Okla.), February 9, 1961. For QJWIN: Luxembourg to HQS, “QJWIN Trip to Italy” (dispatch), March 3, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10370, p. 2, para. 6.

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Jerrie had already left Florida “Jerrie Cobb to Be Guest on Astrojet,” Daily Oklahoman, March 10, 1961. See also Bill Sumner, “Astrogal Can’t Wait for Space,” Pasadena Independent, March 14, 1961.

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“Sam” was all set Jean Pierson, “Contact Was Made with Cobb at 9:45 This Date” (two memos), March 1 and 9, 1960, RIF# 104-10175-10256.

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“Jerri,” now spelled with two Rs “Olla 1232, Pouch 263 Left Luxe 3 March” (cable), March 4, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10367.

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Interlude 7: Cuba and Fidel

So I decided to go Author’s trip to Cuba, October 3–11, 2015.

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warmly greeted by Jerrie and Ruth Author’s visit with Jerrie Cobb, Sun City Center, Florida, October 11–12, 2015.

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CHAPTER 8: THE ELECTION

8.1 Kennedy

he was bugged by the FBI Frank Church, “Government Adherence to the Law: A Call for a Temporary Special Prosecutor on Intelligence Abuses,” February 19, 1976, RIF# 124-10274-10064, p. 2.

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monitored by the NSA Richard Leiby, “Declassified Documents Listened In on MLK,” Washington Post, September 25, 2013.

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surveilled by the CIA Church, “Government Adherence to the Law,” pp. 3–4.

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Former intelligence lackeys Lawrence Meyer, “Last Two Guilty in Watergate Plot,” Washington Post, January 31, 1973.

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And Malcolm X’s assassination Josiah Bates, “The Enduring Mystery of Malcolm X’s Assassination,” Time, February 20, 2020.

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Vice President Richard Nixon Richard M. Nixon, The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978), pp. 202–3.

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Allen Dulles personally briefed Ibid., p. 220; Richard N. Goodwin, Remembering America: A Voice from the Sixties (Boston: Little, Brown, 1988), p. 125.

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a draft of that speech resides The speech written by June Cobb is in Reel 10, Folder E, “Cobb, Viola June,” RIF# 1994.03.11.13:45:14:320005, pp. 185–200. The speech is unlabeled, incomplete, and a work in progress.

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8.2 The Speech

adjoining room for an audio team J. D. Esterline, “Audio Surveillance of AMUPAS/1,” October 6, 1960, RIF# 104-10175-10220.

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coincided with the final four weeks The entire Cobb surveillance log series, under the name “Operations Log from New York Field Office,” can be found at the National Archives and consists of the following RIF numbers: 104-10111-10183 and 104-10266-10049 (October 12–25), 104-10111-10082 and 104-10266-10047 (October 26–31), 104-10266-10044 (November 1–6), and 104-10266-10042 (November 7–9). This surveillance series can be found in two NARA collections, but both are incomplete and must be merged to obtain the full collection.

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a 194-page summary log Ibid.

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She was aware she was bugged She turned up the music on October 19, 1960, at 2:11 a.m., 9:56 p.m., and 10:01 p.m. Ibid., RIF# 104-10111-10183.

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couldn’t read aloud October 26, 1960, at 4:43 p.m. Ibid., RIF# 104-10111-10183.

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a twelve-block walk Cobb was installed at the Park Chambers Hotel on 68 West 58th Street. Kennedy’s campaign headquarters was at 277 Park Avenue.

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“Subject [Cobb] reads aloud” October 29, 1960, at 10:43 p.m., “Operations Log,” RIF# 104-10266-10047.

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“Four weeks ago, when” The entire draft speech is in Reel 10, Folder E, “Cobb, Viola June,” RIF# 1994.03.11.13:45:14:320005, pp. 185–200. The quoted section is on pp. 185–86. This speech references Castro’s exit from New York “four weeks ago.” Castro left New York on September 28, 1960, so June was writing this draft on or about October 26. June read the speech aloud to a visitor on October 29, as recorded by the surveilling agents.

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secure her typewriter carbons Pierson’s note about Cobb’s typewriter carbons is undated, but from the mention of Cobb’s upcoming doctors’ appointments, the note can be dated to the last few days of October 1960. Jean Pierson, “Recommendations re: Cobb,” RIF# 104-10175-10199.

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kept her informed through cryptic memos See Subchapter 8.5.

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“the deadly enemy of free men” Cobb’s speech, in Reel 10, Folder E, “Cobb, Viola June,” RIF# 1994.03.11.13:45:14:320005, pp. 185–200. The quoted section is on p. 185.

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“Most of the once independent presses” Ibid., p. 189.

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Latin America, the sardines Juan José Arévalo, The Shark and the Sardines (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1961).

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pretending she believed in it In Cobb’s pitch to President Arévalo, she offered not only to translate his book but to conduct a lobbying campaign to influence Kennedy’s advisers to reverse the damage the United States had done in Latin America. Viola June Cobb testimony, Hearing Before the Senate Judiciary Sub-Committee on Internal Security, March 30, 1962, RIF# 104-10218-10384, pp. 6–11.

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She used a similar tactic Ibid., p. 5.

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“supporting the fight” Cobb’s speech, in Reel 10, Folder E, “Cobb, Viola June,” RIF# 1994.03.11.13:45:14:320005, p. 186.

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careful to avoid overthrow language Richard N. Goodwin, Remembering America: A Voice from the Sixties (Boston: Little, Brown, 1988), pp. 125–26.

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he was receiving her materials Viola June Cobb testimony, Hearing Before the Senate Judiciary Sub-Committee on Internal Security, March 30, 1962, RIF# 104-10218-10384, pp. 18–19, 35.

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8.3 Boy Wonder

“boy wonder” Richard H. Boyce, “What’s Ahead for ‘Boy Wonder’ Who Zoomed to the Top with JFK? Harvard Graduate Who Became ‘Chief Advisor’ on Latin America with No Background Gets Additional Job at Peace Corps,” (Scripps Howard News Service) El Paso Herald-Post, August 30, 1962.

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“kid playing with fire” Ibid.

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downplaying her contacts with him June claimed in her testimony that she set out to translate The Shark and the Sardines so she could share its merits with Kennedy’s team, but the speech she penned for Kennedy harshly denounced the book. Viola June Cobb testimony, Hearing Before the Senate Judiciary Sub-Committee on Internal Security, March 30, 1962, RIF# 104-10218-10384, pp. 7, 18–19, 35.

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“By the way, do you remember” June Cobb to Jean Pierson, “Letter Stating Plans to Travel Around Latin America” (memo), April 14, 1961, RIF# 104-10266-10135.

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the Kennedy White Paper CUBA (Department of State, 1961), Arthur M. Schlesinger Personal Papers, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

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“almost exactly what the White Paper” Cobb to Pierson, “Letter Stating Plans.”

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on the Cuban government payroll “Yank on Fidel’s Payroll Flies In,” New York Daily News, September 18, 1960.

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why did Cobb believe her sway Richard N. Goodwin did not respond to the author’s request for an interview.

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“command operation” Richard N. Goodwin to John F. Kennedy, “For the President” (memo), November 1, 1961, p. 1, paras. 1 and 2, Richard N. Goodwin Personal Papers, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

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“even if the CIA can find” Ibid., p. 1, para. 3.

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by none other than himself Ibid., p. 1, para. 4.

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The tone of his memo Ibid., p. 2. Goodwin suggested that aspects of this program should be run under the cover of other routine administration activities on Cuba. Shortly after penning this memo, he was transferred to the Peace Corps.

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8.4 October Surprise

Kennedy goaded Nixon “Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy at Democratic Dinner, Cincinnati, Ohio,” October 6, 1960, Papers of John F. Kennedy, Pre-Presidential Papers, Speeches and the Press, Box 912, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

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under wraps for strategic purposes Richard N. Goodwin, Remembering America: A Voice from the Sixties (Boston: Little, Brown, 1988 ), p. 125; Richard M. Nixon, The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978), p. 220.

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“In late October, en route” The story of Goodwin’s mistake is from Goodwin, Remembering America, pp. 124–26; the quote is on p. 125.

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“who offer eventual hope” “Statement of John F. Kennedy” (news release), October 21, 1960, p. 3, Papers of John F. Kennedy, Pre-Presidential Papers, Presidential Campaign Files 1960, Speeches and Press Releases—National Democratic Committee, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. This is not Goodwin’s original typed release but rather a reprint put out the same day by the Democratic National Committee.

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“none of us had the heart” Goodwin, Remembering America, p. 125.

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The bombshell detonated Peter Kihss, “Kennedy Asks Aid for Rebels to Defeat Castro,” New York Times, October 21, 1961.

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That night Nixon capitalized Fourth Presidential Debate (transcript), October 21, 1960, Commission on Presidential Debates, Debates.org.

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just two weeks away “Nixon Says Kennedy Plan Risks World War,” New York Times, October 23, 1960.

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“If I win this thing” Goodwin, Remembering America, p. 126.

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worst campaign blunder James Reston, “Washington: The Bees Are Settling Along the Potomac,” New York Times, October 23, 1960.

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reading her speech aloud October 29, 1960, at 10:43 p.m., “Operations Log from New York Field Office,” October 26–31, 1960, RIF# 104-10266-10047.

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“This brings us back” Cobb speech, in Reel 10, Folder E, “Cobb, Viola June,” RIF# 1994.03.11.13:45:14:320005, p. 186.

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“1:07 p.m. SUBJECT [Cobb]” Entries for October 30, 1960, “Operations Log from New York Field Office,” October 26–31, 1960, RIF# 104-10266-10047.

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Kennedy’s campaign headquarters in Manhattan The Kennedy campaign phone number can be found on a press release from October 29, 1960, at Papers of John F. Kennedy, Pre-Presidential Papers, Presidential Campaign Files, 1960, Publicity Division, October 25–31, 1960, p. 69, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

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8.5 Getting Nixon Elected

“William S. [Barnes] had apparently” June Cobb to Jean Pierson, “Discussion with William S. Barnes, Harvard Law Professor” (memo), October 13, 1960, RIF# 104-10175-10210.

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“Barnes seems to want” June Cobb to Jean Pierson, “Report Re Professor (William S.) Barnes Visit on 21 October 1960” (memo), October 22, 1960, RIF# 104-10175-10197.

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“Well, it’s very difficult” Cobb, “Discussion with Barnes.”

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Nixon drew blood in the debate Fourth Presidential Debate (transcript), October 21, 1960, Commission on Presidential Debates, Debates.org.

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dean at Harvard Law Clark Simmons, “William Sprague Barnes” (memo), April 3, 1961, RIF# 104-10175-10022.

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president of the Harvard Law Review Harvard Law School Yearbook, 1958.

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Latin American think tank “Oral History Interview of Lincoln Gordon” (transcript), May 30, 1964, pp. 1–8, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

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8.6 “Johnny” and “Bobby”

From October 11 to 13 Kennedy’s whereabouts can be tracked based on the locations of the speeches he made and news accounts of public events he attended. The American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara, hosts an archive listing all of Kennedy’s campaign events, at Presidency.ucsb.edu.

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began on the thirteenth “Operational Logs of the New York Field Office,” October 12–25, 1960, RIF# 104-10111-10183. See also RIF# 104-10266-10049.

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“troublesome friends” June Cobb to Jean Pierson, “Discussion with William S. Barnes, Harvard Law Professor” (memo), October 13, 1960, RIF# 104-10175-10210.

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That night Kennedy broadcast his portion Third Presidential Debate (transcript), October 13, 1960, Commission on Presidential Debates, Debates.org.

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Cobb watched that debate On October 13 at 7:30 p.m. Cobb watched the debate. At 11:10 p.m. she got an incoming call and invited the caller to her hotel room. “Operational Logs of the New York Field Office,” October 12–25, 1960, RIF# 104-10111-10183.

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The unnamed visitor arrived October 14 from 12:50 a.m. to 4 a.m., “Operational Logs of the New York Field Office,” October 14–25, 1960, RIF# 104-10266-10049. The events of this evening can be reconstructed only by patching together two fragmented documents held in different collections. The full transcripts from the audio reels are not available in the JFK Assassination Records. Only a summary log of general activities has been released.

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That night Kennedy attended “Both Candidates Speak Here Today,” New York Times, October 19, 1960.

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She was away from her hotel October 19, 1960, “Operational Logs of the New York Field Office,” October 12–25, 1960, RIF# 104-10266-10049.

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“seen Johnny last night” October 20 at 5:25 p.m., “Operational Logs of the New York Field Office,” October 12–25, 1960, RIF# 104-10111-10183.

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That evening Cobb threw a bash Cobb’s hotel room party was on October 20–21 from 11:10 p.m. to 4:30 a.m., ibid.

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a party the CIA paid for Jean Pierson, “New York Trip, ⅞ Nov” (memo for the record), November 9, 1960, RIF# 104-10175-10299, para. 4.

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The socializing began around dinnertime October 20 at 6:22 p.m., “Operational Logs of the New York Field Office,” October 12–25, 1960, RIF# 104-10111-10183.

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People kept arriving, drinking October 21, 1:15 a.m., ibid.

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one of the most active talkers October 21, 12:50 a.m., ibid.

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Cobb’s “boyfriend” was an English speaker October 21, 3:05–4:40 a.m., ibid.

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away from the microphones October 21, 10:32 a.m., ibid.

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According to her report June Cobb to Jean Pierson, “Report Re Professor (William S.) Barnes Visit on 21 October 1960” (memo), October 22, 1960, RIF# 104-10175-10197.

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“Bobby” left Cobb’s suite October 21 at 5:50 p.m., “Operational Logs of the New York Field Office,” October 12–25, 1960, RIF# 104-10111-10183.

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broadcasting a few blocks away Fourth Presidential Debate (transcript), October 21, 1960, Commission on Presidential Debates, Debates.org. This debate was held at ABC Studios in New York City.

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being “Bobby Salas,” a Cuban photographer Jean Pierson, “Phone Contact AMUPAS/1,” October 22, 1960, RIF# 104-10175-10196.

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submitted her document on Cuba Viola June Cobb testimony, Hearing Before the Senate Judiciary Sub-Committee on Internal Security, March 30, 1962, RIF# 104-10218-10384. Her contacts with Goodwin and submission of her “memo” are on pp. 18–19, 35.

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her views into Kennedy’s White Paper June Cobb, “Letter Stating Plans to Travel Around Latin America,” April 14, 1961, RIF# 104-10266-10135.

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“wonderful article” On November 4 the man and woman arrive at Cobb’s room at 10:30 p.m. They talk about “Dr. Goodwin,” and then they leave at 11:50 p.m. “Operational Logs of the New York Field Office,” November 1–6, 1960, RIF# 104-10266-10044. Cobb told her visitors that “Dr. Goodwin was also nervous about his upcoming talk with Adolph [sic] Berle.” Richard Goodwin worked closely with Adolf Berle on Kennedy’s Cuban and Latin American policies, including those developed during Kennedy’s transition. Adolf A. Berle, Oral History Interview, July 6, 1967, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. Berle says he was invited to work with the Kennedy transition team on p. 6, and that he was working with Goodwin on pp. 8, 9, 14, 18, 23, 35, 50, 53.

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Nixon didn’t concede until Bill Becker, “Nixon Wire Gives His Best Wishes,” New York Times, November 9, 1960.

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rolling up the surveillance net “Synopsis—Operations Ceased; Appropriate Security Checks of the Area Completed,” November 9, 1960, RIF# 104-10111-10164.

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Interlude 8: Back to Redbird

drive across the Yucatán Author’s trip with Jerrie across the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, March 24–31, 2015.

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Once, we spent five weeks Author’s trip with Jerrie Cobb across the Atlantic and throughout Spain, April 26 to May 22, 2014.

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Operation Paperclip Jay Watkins, “Intelligence in Public Literature,” October 6, 2014, CIA.gov.

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my landing sequence for Redbird Author’s conversation with Jerrie Cobb in Puerto Morelos, Mexico, March 28, 2015.

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taken by amateurs and by other outlets Life, November 29, 1963.

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CHAPTER 9: PROJECT ZRRIFLE

9.1 QJWIN’s Final Operation

“I met all those presidents” Jerrie Cobb, conversation with the author while crossing the Atlantic by ship, April 28, 2014.

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how she’d scored tickets so close Jerrie Cobb, conversation with the author in Miami, January 15, 2017. See also Jerrie Cobb and Jane Rieker, Woman into Space: The Jerrie Cobb Story (Hoboken, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963), pp. 185–88.

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“With a good conscience our only” John F. Kennedy, inaugural address, January 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

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William Harvey and Arnold Silver sat “Handwritten Draft: Project ZRRIFLE,” January 26, 1961, RIF# 104-10086-10279.

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five months after the president’s death “Termination of QJWIN” (dispatch), April 24, 1964, RIF# 104-10150-10082.

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“the White House had charged” William K. Harvey testimony, Church Committee, U.S. Senate, July 11, 1975, RIF# 157-10011-10053, p. 52.

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“began as the development” William Harvey, interview, September 14, 1975, RIF# 157-10011-10124, p. 6, sec. 32.

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ZRRIFLE doesn’t appear The first agency communication to refer to ZRRIFLE was William Harvey to cable secretariat, “Distribution—ZRRIFLE Traffic,” May 24, 1961, RIF# 104-10514-10007.

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“and you didn’t say” Richard Bissell testimony, Church Committee, U.S. Senate, June 9, 1975, RIF# 157-10011-10020, p. 53.

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Harvey disavowed involvement in these early William Harvey, interview, September 14, 1975, RIF# 157-10011-10124, p. 1 sec. 2 (denies knowledge of Lumumba ops); p. 7, sec. 33 (claims he entered into the Castro ops in November 1961).

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Harvey tried to say that Johnny Ibid., pp. 6–8.

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in late January 1961 “Handwritten Draft: Project ZRRIFLE,” January 26, 1961, RIF# 104-10086-10279.

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It accelerated into action William Harvey to cable secretariat, “Distribution—ZRRIFLE Traffic,” May 24, 1961, RIF# 104-10514-10007.

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was terminated in April 1964 “Termination of QJWIN” (dispatch), April 24, 1964, RIF# 104-10150-10082. The termination of QJWIN as an agent also marked the termination of the project.

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“the same types QJWIN was to find” HQS to Luxembourg, “Purpose Trip Is Spot Assess Recommend Same Types QJWIN Was to Find in Dakar” (cable), January 23, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10054.

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looking for safecrackers and burglars Luxembourg to HQS, “Besta Changed Ref Meeting” (cable), February 22, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10371.

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9.2 America Lost Its Guts

One evening while we were discussing Author’s trip with Jerrie Cobb across the Atlantic and throughout Spain, April 26 to May 22, 2014.

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Curtis LeMay vigorously championed this strategy Richard Rhodes, “The General and World War 3,” New Yorker, June 11, 1995.

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“If I see that the Russians” Ibid.

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“two clashing worldviews” Lisa Pease to the author, February 22, 2023.

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with U.S. military air cover “Kennedy Says U.S. Never Planned Air Cover for Cuban Invasion Fiasco,” (UPI) Tampa Tribune, January 25, 1963.

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orchestrate a false flag attack U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba,” March 13, 1962. See also David Talbot, Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years (New York: Free Press, 2007), pp. 106–7.

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Kennedy created a back channel “The Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962,” Office of the Historian, State.gov.

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“the President may, in fact” Church Committee, U.S. Senate, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders: An Interim Report (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975), pp. 11–12, 278 (quote).

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was not a stable man John Scelso testimony, Select Committee on Assassinations, U.S. House of Representatives, May 16, 1978, pp. 146–47.

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He hated the Kennedys Bayard Stockton, Flawed Patriot: The Rise and Fall of CIA Legend Bill Harvey (Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2006), p. 261. See also David C. Martin, “The CIA’s Loaded Gun,” Washington Post, October 10, 1976.

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factored into his demotion Scelso testimony, Select Committee on Assassinations, pp. 144–45.

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without proper authorization Martin, “CIA’s Loaded Gun.”

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“The one sure way to do it” William Harvey, interview by Burt Wides, June 19, 1975, Miscellaneous Records of the Church Committee, 1975, RIF# 157-10014-10102, p. 6.

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ZRRIFLE was born on William Harvey testimony, Church Committee, U.S. Senate, June 25, 1975, RIF# 157-10002-10105, p. 51.

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9.3 The Creation Document

“The Creation Document” “Handwritten Draft: Project ZRRIFLE,” January 26, 1961, RIF# 104-10086-10279.

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“dual purpose” William Harvey testimony, Church Committee, U.S. Senate, June 25, 1975, RIF# 157-10002-10105, p. 49.

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a secretive banking system Francisco Guarascio, “After Years of Pressure, Luxembourg Drops Bank Secrecy Rules,” Reuters, October 14, 2014.

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Dulles’s code names appear openly Director Allen W. Dulles (pseud. Ascham) to Leopoldville (cable), August 26, 1960, attached to “Testimony of Bronson Tweedy,” October 9, 1975, RIF# 157-10014-10089, pp. 73–74. The CIA Office of Security claimed to hold documents showing Dulles was fully apprised on the Castro assassination operations: Security Analysis Group to director of security, “Roselli/Mahue Matter,” May 23, 1975, RIF# 104-10133-10041.

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ran June out of the CIA’s According to the signifiers on her files, June Cobb worked for WH/4/CI, or Western Hemisphere Division Region 4 (Cuba) in counterintelligence, from her CIA recruitment until her transfer to Mexico City in May 1961. Counterespionage is a subset of counterintelligence, the rooting out of enemy spies. Falsifications in Cobb’s file are discussed in Subchapter 9.8.

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Harvey’s two pages yield insight into “Handwritten Draft: Project ZRRIFLE,” January 26 (1961), RIF# 104-10086-10279, pp. 8–9.

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Technical Services director Sidney Gottlieb William Harvey testimony, Church Committee, U.S. Senate, June 25, 1975, RIF# 157-10002-10105, p. 53.

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“A very sensitive and unusual technique” Ibid., p. 59.

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his euphemism for the technology William Harvey, interview by Burt Wides, June 19, 1975, Miscellaneous Records of the Church Committee, 1975, RIF# 157-10014-10102, pp. 12–13.

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“Dick Ledford” Ibid., p. 22.

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coordinating technologies for Gottlieb’s Jack Ledford, “Map and Chart Destruct System” (memo), July 23, 1963, CIA FOIA Reading Room, CIA.gov. See also Jack Ledford to chief of Technical Services Division, “Shark Repeller Device” (memo), March 20, 1964. Many more examples can be found in FOIA Reading Room, CIA.gov.

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and for ELINT, both “Cuba,” President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (Minutes of the October 9, 1962, Meeting of the Special Group), RIF# 206-10001-10015, p. 5, FOIA Reading Room, CIA.gov. See also Jack Ledford, “Transfer of Certain Projects to the Office of ELINT” (memo), February 20, 1963, FOIA Reading Room, CIA.gov.

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oversight of the U-2 “Obituary: Jack Clarence Ledford, USAF,” Arizona Daily Star, December 2, 2007.

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specialized camera systems Jack Ledford to ELINT, “Procurement of Additional B Cameras” (memo), September 9, 1963, CIA FOIA Reading Room, CIA.gov.

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infrared systems Albert Wheelon to director of Central Intelligence, “IR Camera,” November 17, 1964, p. 3, CIA FOIA Reading Room, CIA.gov.

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radar system developments Ledford to chairman COMOR, “OXCART Side Looking Radar,” December 17, 1965, CIA FOIA Reading Room, CIA.gov.

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his nickname for Frank Rowlett William Harvey, interview by Burt Wides, June 19, 1975, p. 23.

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“translating machine” Wolfgang Saxon, “Frank B. Rowlett, 90, Wizard in Making and Breaking Codes,” New York Times, July 2, 1998.

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“from the printed word” William Harvey, interview by Burt Wides, June 19, 1975, p. 23.

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Marguerite Oswald made an appearance Marguerite Oswald testimony, Warren Commission Hearings, February 10, 1964, pp. 1:206–7.

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the whereabouts of her son “Department of State—Memorandum of Conversation, Subject: Lee Oswald,” January 26, 1961, RIF# 1993.06.19.10:49:38:460000.

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petitioned for his return to America Lee Harvey Oswald to U.S. embassy in Moscow (letter), February 5, 1961, Warren Commission Exhibit 245.

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9.4 Oswald and False Defectors

Oswald was born in New Orleans Warren Commission Report (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1964), pp. 377–90.

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prompted speculation that it positioned him Nicholas M. Horrock, “Oswald Link to CIA Reported at Inquiry,” New York Times, March 27, 1978.

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Many, like Oswald, made the leap John Newman, Oswald and the CIA (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1995), pp. 168–69.

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Over 50 percent of Americans today Herb Scribner, “70% of Voters Want JFK Assassination Records Released, Poll Shows,” Axios, December 6, 2022.

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Oswald’s own mother believed Marguerite Oswald testimony, Warren Commission Hearings, February 10, 1964, p. 1:142.

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Robert Kennedy directly confronted Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Robert Kennedy and His Times (Boston: Mariner Books, 2002), p. 616.

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“I frankly believe that” “Transcripts: Face the Nation/Senator Schweiker,” June 27, 1976, RIF# 104-10322-10007.

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Schweiker ultimately concluded that Oswald David Talbot, Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years (New York: Free Press, 2007), p. 380.

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excellent starting points in understanding Newman, Oswald and the CIA, pp. 381–82; John Newman, Uncovering Popov’s Mole (Self-published, 2022).

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the announcement of Oswald’s arrest See Subchapter 10.3.

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KGB was never able to prove Norman Mailer, Oswald’s Tale (New York: Random House, 1995). Norman Mailer conducted an interview with a KGB agent to gain their views on Oswald and his defection. “Igor,” pt. 3, sec. 1, pp. 69–72. While this book has a disclaimer regarding fictionalization, many sections were based on well-sourced investigative work, and Mailer was among the first to probe the KGB’s perspective on Oswald.

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Oswald began seeking his homecoming Lee Harvey Oswald to U.S. embassy in Moscow, February 5, 1961, Warren Commission Exhibit 245. This letter references a prior letter Oswald sent to the embassy in December 1960. That letter, if it existed, would suggest an earlier return signaled during the Kennedy interregnum.

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Upon receipt of his letter Lee Harvey Oswald, diary, entry for February 28, 1961, Warren Commission Exhibit 024.

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Webster offered to share his expertise Appendix to Hearings—House Select Committee on Assassinations (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979), pp. 12:449–51.

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highlighting his radar experience Ibid., p. 461.

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Webster, like Oswald, orchestrated his return Bill Simpich, State Secret: Wiretapping in Mexico City, Double Agents, and the Framing of Lee Oswald (Mary Ferrell Foundation, 2013), chap. 1, MaryFerrell.org.

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Split opinions about the defectors Bill Gertz, “Once Secret Files Reveal New Details of CIA’s Defector Dispute,” Washington Times, January 1, 2023.

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mole at headquarters to seek information John Newman, Countdown to Darkness (Self-published, 2017), chap. 1.

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Mole-hunting operations Bill Simpich, “The Twelve Who Built the Oswald Legend; Part 3; Counter-Intelligence Goes Mole Hunting with Oswald’s File,” December 7, 2010, https://www.maryferrell.org/​pages/​Oswald_Legend.html.

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mole-hunting unit about matters pertaining “Background on Mary K. Murphy,” July 1, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10017. Birch D. O’Neal was the head of CI/SID, the mole-hunting unit.

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and could trigger a nuclear war Osgood Caruthers, “Two Code Clerks Defect to Soviet: Score U.S. Spying,” New York Times, September 7, 1960.

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resurfacing in Moscow Richard Bissell to CIA research director, “Concerning American Defectors Living in Bloc Countries” (letter), November 21, 1960, RIF# 1993.06.21.13:29:07:870240, attachment p. 4.

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were spotted with June Cobb Victor White to William Harvey (chief TFW), “Cobb, Viola June” (memo), May 9, 1962, RIF# 104-10248-10214.

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before it was even clear that Anita Potaki (A.P.) to William Harvey, “ZRGRACE—Mitchell and Martin Tokyo Tour” (memo), August 17, 1960, RIF# 104-10176-10164.

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“identity of the person” Anita Potaki to William Harvey, “ZRGRACE Investigation—Orally from Joe Noel,” September 20, 1960, RIF# 104-10176-10094.

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defectors was CIA agent June Cobb Victor White to William Harvey (chief TFW), “Cobb, Viola June” (memo), May 9, 1962, RIF# 104-10248-10214.

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organizing a student youth congress Jean Pierson, “Re: AMUPAS/1” (memo), September 9, 1960, RIF# 104-10175-10265, p. 1, para. 3b.

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Mitchell spoke at the youth congress Anita Potocki to William Harvey, “NSA Telephone Request, 28 September 1960 (for Recordings at Youth Congress),” October 26, 1960, RIF# 104-10176-10016.

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“stamps autographed by Castro” Jean Pierson, “Conversations with Harry Hermsdorf Re: June Cobb,” August 1, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10016.

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“in view of the allegation” Victor White to William Harvey (chief TFW), “Cobb, Viola June” (memo), May 9, 1962, RIF# 104-10248-10214.

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“NSA or CIC” Ibid., notation in margin.

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Jean Pierson would appear to hold Here are the known June Cobb/William Harvey intersections: (1) Harvey monitored and appeared to intervene when Cobb was spotted in 1960 with Martin and Mitchell; ibid. and Anita Potocki to William Harvey, “ZRGRACE Investigation—Orally from Joe Noel,” September 20, 1960, RIF# 104-10176-10094. (2) Harvey was offered a debriefing with Cobb in 1961 on the subject of her Orta operation; Jean Pierson to William Harvey, “AMDOFF/1” (memo), March 29, 1961, RIF# 104-10175-10221. (3) After June Cobb testified to Congress in 1962, Pierson apprised Harvey about how she did; Jean Pierson, “C/WH/POA Called to Inform the Undersigned that June Sharp Cobb Was Arriving in Washington,” March 29, 1962, RIF# 104-10175-10146. (4) Harvey’s TFW Division paid for her mysterious hospitalization in the summer of 1961; G. J. Zogby to William Harvey (chief TFW), “Outstanding Loan” (memo), June 20, 1962, RIF# 104-10266-10158. And (5) Harvey’s TFW Division managed Cobb’s contacts with Maria Witowska in the summer of 1962; numerous cables and dispatches in Cobb’s file.

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9.5 Case Officer Duality

seen Pierson’s name spelled “Pearson” Ralf True, “Cobb, Viola June” (memo), October 24, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10001, p. 3. See also Ralf True, “Cobb, Viola June” (memo), October 17, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10000.

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match Jerrie from throttle to tail The Ninety Nines: Yesterday—Today—Tomorrow (Turner Publishing, 1996), p. 175.

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she ferried all manner of battlecraft Michigan Aviation Hall of Fame enshrinees, AirZoo.org/​enshrinees.

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who both funded and torpedoed Martha Ackmann, The Mercury 13 (New York: Random House, 2003), pp. 127–32 (Cochran funded M13 tests, then backed away), pp. 161–64 (torpedoed program).

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Both flew military jets Jean Pearson, “At 40,000 Feet, 15 Seconds Can Mean Your Lifetime,” Detroit Free Press, February 4, 1957.

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knew Air Force generals Jean Pearson, “Vital Area Defended from Detroit,” Detroit Free Press, February 7, 1957.

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trained with the male astronauts “Jean Hanmer Pearson” (obituary), Grosse Point News, January 21, 2010.

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explored the South Pole Jean Pearson was among the first women at the South Pole: “First Females Make Historic Landing at South Pole,” Times Herald (Mich.), November 21, 1969. Jerrie had pictures of herself at the South Pole and discussed her trip to the pole with the author.

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Both had their own airplanes Jean Pearson owned a Cessna 172 from 1961 to 2005: Michigan Aviation Hall of Fame enshrinees, AirZoo.org/​enshrinees.

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entered the same air races Ibid. Jerrie and Jean regularly flew in the annual American Women’s Transcontinental Air Race, also called the Powder Puff Derby.

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joined the same flight clubs Jerrie and Jean shared memberships in the Aviation Space Writers Association, the FAA Women’s Advisory Panel, the Ninety-Nines, and the National Aeronautical Association, among other organizations.

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breathing the very same air A photograph shows Jerrie and Jean together at the first FAA Women’s Advisory Panel meeting in Oklahoma City in 1964. International Women’s Air and Space Museum.

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an event they both attended Jean Pearson, “Can Man Live in ‘Arks,’ ” Detroit Free Press, January 19, 1961. Jerrie was pictured at the event in “She’s Ready to Tackle Assignment in Space,” Dallas Morning News, January 17, 1961.

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Tulsa “Peaceful Uses of Space” conference Jean Pearson, “After Landing, How Do We Get Off Moon?” Detroit Free Press, May 27, 1961; “Jerrie to Join Space Agency,” Daily Oklahoman, May 27, 1961.

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She jumped at the idea Jerrie Cobb and Jane Rieker, Woman into Space: The Jerrie Cobb Story (Hoboken, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963), pp. 130–34.

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Pearson also attended that same event “Air Unit Honors Jean Pearson,” Detroit Free Press, September 6, 1959.

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while Flickinger and Lovelace were honored “AFA Honors Two Leaders,” (AP) Charlotte Observer, September 6, 1959.

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Pearson’s jaw-dropping scoop Jean Pearson, “Thrills Await Seven Astronauts on Whirligig,” Detroit Free Press, December 8, 1959.

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the astronauts trained on it “Astronauts Train at Cleveland Lab,” (UPI) Daily Times (Ohio), February 17, 1960.

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Jerrie flew it that April “Flying Jerrie Hops Here to Judge Models,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 5, 1960.

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Her rendezvous with national secrets Harry Golden, Jr., “Feet on the Ground—Heart in the Sky,” Detroit Free Press, July 13, 1958.

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she trained alongside the Mercury astronauts “Jean Hanmer Pearson” (obituary).

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much more time with the astronauts Jerrie Cobb, interviews by the author, June 11–13, 2009, and March 12–13, 2010.

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a member of June’s covert network Hemming appears in many of June’s cryptic reports and was in contact with Cobb’s deep team in Cuba. In this document, Cobb sent Hemming’s address to her case officer: Reel 11, Folder D, “CIA DO/LA Files on Viola June Cobb,” RIF# 1994.03.08.14:28:49:690007.

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a woman named “Betty Vetter” On August 19, 2005, Gerry Hemming posted on a JFK message board: “June’s case officer was Betty Vetter, who is still alive and laughing.” At the time when Hemming made that comment, Betty Vetter had been dead ten years, but Jean Pearson was still enjoying her retirement. See Hemming’s post at http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/​topic/​5254-dick-russell-the-man-who-knew-too-much/​?tab=comments#comment-37463.

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shared the same CIA phone extension For Vetter: Betty Vetter, “Viola June Cobb” (memo), February 13, 1961, RIF# 104-10175-10270. For Pierson: Jean Pierson, “Request for Cancellation—Cobb, Viola June” (form), February 13, 1961, RIF# 104-10175-10271.

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Vetter lived out her days I visited Iowa State University library in August 2015 and perused Betty Vetter’s archived papers: Betty McGee Vetter Papers, Iowa State University, Special Collections Department. Cicely Angleton, wife of James Angleton (Jean Pierson’s boss), signed Betty’s funeral guest list, which is held in this collection. Betty’s lengthy ordeal with terminal cancer is described in detail there.

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9.6 ZRRIFLE Begins

two days after Pierson told Harvey Jean Pierson to William Harvey, “AMDOFF/1” (memo), March 29, 1961, RIF# 104-10175-10221.

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for a debriefing with QJWIN Washington to Frankfurt, “Planning Send James N. Rabney Fran to Meet Agent” (cable), March 17, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10052.

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QJWIN was grilled about an incident Howard Glastra, “Technical Interrogation Report,” April 5, 1961, RIF# 104-10133-10215.

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“obtain a sample of a new model” Ibid., p. 1, sec. 3.

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called “Reissiu,” Ibid., p. 1, sec. 3 (IDENTITY E); p. 3.

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like the “Resew” “Handwritten Draft: Project ZRRIFLE,” January 25, 1961, RIF# 104-10086-10279, p. 8.

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airbase that QJWIN had recently visited Jerrie told me she toured a U-2 cockpit and was in discussions about piloting the U-2 for a special flight. Jerrie Cobb, conversation with the author, Sheraton Newark Airport Hotel, December 30, 2010.

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to hire petty criminals from France Arnold Silver (pseud. James Rabney) to HQS, “After LCFLUTTER QJWIN 31 March Intend Brief and Send Him” (cable), ca. March 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10441.

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“agents will be spotted” “Project ZRRIFLE” (handwritten draft), January 25, 1961, RIF# 104-10086-10279, p. 1, sec. 1.

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dollars, not in the usual Belgian francs In Silver’s notebook, in addition to notes from his meetings with QJWIN, there are signed pages that match Mankel’s normal payment slips. On the slip dated April 14, 1961, Mankel signed for $250 in U.S. currency and on April 22, 1961, he signed for $300. Arnold Silver, “QJWIN” (handwritten notes), RIF# 104-10185-10405.

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June Cobb was meeting with “William Barnes,” June Cobb (memo), April 14, 1961, in Reel 11, Folder D, “CIA DO/LA Files,” p. 212. For the Barnes payment arrangements, see also Subchapter 9.10.

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“Cobb was so upset” Jean Pierson, “Telephonic Contact with Cobb” (memo for the record), April 27, 1961, RIF# 104-10174-10077, p. 2.

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Catherine Taaffe sent an anguished letter Catherine Taaffe to Robert F. Kennedy, April 24, 1961, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, August 29, 2008, p. 479. See also Appendix 1.

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“French” recruits whom Silver Arnold Silver (pseud. James Rabney) to HQS, “After LCFLUTTER QJWIN 31 March Intend Brief and Send Him” (cable), April 3, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10441.

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both were on board with ZRRIFLE In this document labeled ZRRIFLE, Santelli was QJWIN’s criminal recruiter: Luxembourg to HQS, “Identification of Candidates” (dispatch), December 15, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10350. Trafficante told the story of his own recruitment by Roselli in Santos Trafficante testimony, Select Committee on Assassinations, U.S. House of Representatives, November 14, 1977, RIF# 180-10118-10137, p. 11.

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both were the agency’s conduits For Santelli, see Subchapter 9.11. Harvey claimed Roselli was central to ZRRIFLE in William Harvey, interview, September 14, 1975, RIF# 157-10011-10124.

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ZRRIFLE at the exact same time Roselli’s memory of his start date was fuzzy, but he didn’t disagree with others who said it might have been as early as October 1960: James P. O’Connell, interview, Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States, May 17, 1975, RIF# 178-10002-10329, p. 4. By November 2, 1960, Santelli was cleared for use in the Congo, where QJWIN could drop Santelli’s name in criminal circles as a reference: William Harvey (pseud. Daniel Presland), “Description and Photograph of Jose Marie Andre Mankel,” November 2, 1960, RIF# 104-10185-10015, p. 2.

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was stationed for most of ZRRIFLE David Atlee Phillips, interview by HSCA, November 27, 1976, RIF# 180-10131-10328, p. 5.

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no evidence that Jean Pierson worked In March 1962, when Cobb arrived to testify to Congress, Pierson sent information about Cobb up the chain of command to William Harvey. This was one of her final acts as Cobb’s case officer: Jean Pierson, “June Sharp Cobb” (memo), March 29, 1962, RIF# 104-10175-10146.

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9.7 Personal Action

“if he can be trusted” Arnold Silver, “QJWIN” (handwritten notes), March 29, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10405, pp. 11–12, emphasis in the original.

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German commando Otto Skorzeny Charles Whiting, Skorzeny, the Most Dangerous Man in Europe (1972; reprinted Conshohocken, Penn.: Combined, 1998).

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Silver knew Skorzeny Arnold M. Silver, “Questions, Questions, Questions: Memories of Oberursel,” Intelligence and National Security 8, no. 2 (1993), https://www.tandfonline.com/​doi/​abs/​10.1080/​02684529308432203.

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available to international intelligence services Skorzeny discussed his freelance intelligence work in several video interviews, including “Otto Skorzeny Interviews,” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=A4yttReH74.

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she brokered his intelligence deals Ralph P. Ganis, The Skorzeny Papers: Evidence for the Plot to Kill JFK (New York: SkyHorse, 2018), pp. 249–51.

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Harvey immediately forwarded a litany Harvey to Arnold Silver (pseud. James Rabney), “Apologize for Delay Responding” (cable), April 12, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10364, pp. 2–4.

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“He [QJWIN] willing to play role” Arnold Silver (pseud. James Rabney) to HQS, “Based on Info from QJWIN” (cable), April 14, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10363.

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they would resume when Harvey to Arnold Silver (pseud. James Rabney), “Re Para 1 Ref, Concur” (cable), April 20, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10362.

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9.8 To Mexico

Cobb was redeployed to Mexico City Jean Pierson to Mexico City, “JMZIP Asset Traveling in Mexico,” June 6, 1961, RIF# 104-10175-10020.

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delivered for his eyes only William Harvey to cable secretariat, “Distribution; ZRRIFLE Traffic,” May 24, 1961, RIF# 104-10514-10007.

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simultaneous adjustments to their pay agreements See Subchapter 9.10.

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Oswald was still trying to arrange Oswald’s letters to the U.S. embassy in Moscow, Warren Commission Exhibits 245–56.

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mailing lengthy letters to his family Oswald’s letters to his brother in May 1961, Warren Commission Exhibits 298–99.

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letters that were intercepted and read See HTLINGUAL in the cryptonym database hosted on MaryFerrell.org.

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Cobb ostensibly left for Mexico City Pierson, “JMZIP Asset Traveling,” p. 1, para. 1.

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same hotel as the president’s entourage Jerrie’s handwritten note to Jackie Cochran asking her to meet was written on Hotel de Crillon stationery. Cochran’s response was dated May 31, 1961, Jacqueline Cochran Papers, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. President Kennedy and his staff’s Paris itinerary can be found at Papers of John F. Kennedy, “Trips, Paris France 1961, 31 May–June 2,” John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

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the same day as the president “Geraldyn Cobb of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma,” is listed on the Paris to New York City flight manifest, June 2, 1961, National Archives, via Ancestry.com.

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sending June off to Mexico City Jean Pierson to WH/3/Mexico (Mexico desk at HQS), “WH/4/CI Asset Traveling in Mexico” (memo), June 5, 1961, RIF# 104-10175-10443; and Pierson, “JMZIP Asset Traveling.”

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the biggest whopper Pierson, “WH/CI/4 Asset Traveling,” p. 3, sec. 4; and Pierson, “JMZIP Asset Traveling,” p. 2, sec. 5.

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when June told someone Birch D. O’Neal to chief WH/4/CI, “June Cobb, Former Radio and Television Commentator” (memo), July 1, 1960, RIF# 104-10165-10173, p. 1, para. 1.

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Cobb has no secret writing training Pierson, “JMZIP Asset Traveling,” p. 2, sec. 5.

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Pierson herself who had trained Cobb Jean Pierson, “A Separate Sheet Must Be Submitted for Each Agent Requiring SW,” September 10, 1960, RIF# 104-10174-10095.

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a new male case officer Pierson, “WH/4/CI Asset Traveling.”

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“AMUPAS-1 [Cobb] is an individual” Pierson, “JMZIP Asset Traveling,” p. 2, sec. 5.

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“the deadly enemy of free men” Cobb speech in Reel 10, Folder E, “Cobb, Viola June,” RIF# 1994.03.11.13:45:14:320005, pp. 185–200. The quote is on p. 185.

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9.9 Recruiting Oswald

Silver was traveling in Europe “Arnold M. Silver of McLean, Virginia,” is listed on the Frankfurt to New York flight manifest, May 4, 1961, National Archives, via Ancestry.com.

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stations for a project code-named ZRRAGTIME Arnold Silver (pseud. James Rabney) to HQS, “After LCFLUTTER QJWIN 31 March Intend Brief and Send Him” (cable), ca. March 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10441, sec. 4.

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“KUCLUB” team and their equipment Washington to [redacted location in Europe], “James N. Rabney ETA Oslo 31 July or 1 Aug” (cable), July 6, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10043.

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bases capable of signaling remote agents Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954 Guatemala (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2003), pp. 187–88.

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were excellent geographic choices The flight distance from Oslo to Minsk is 755 miles, Copenhagen to Minsk is 615 miles, and Brussels to Minsk is 990 miles. Shortwave radio systems can broadcast thousands of miles at night, which is when Silver’s radio operations took place.

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the defector worked at a radio factory “FBI Sup. Investigation of Assassination of President Kennedy,” January 13, 1964, Warren Commission Document 107, p. 57.

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Oswald flew to Moscow Oswald’s diary from Russia, Warren Commission Exhibit 24, p. 10.

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June used her sterile phone line Jean Pierson, “Cable from June Corwin, Mexico City” (handwritten note), June 28, 1961, RIF# 104-10175-10430.

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“Pls [please] contact AMUPAS ONE” Jean Pierson (HQS) to Mexico City, “Please Contact AMUPAS/1” (cable), July 10, 1961, RIF# 104-10175-10017.

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so she moved the call series Jean Pierson (HQS) to Mexico City, “Ref Para 2 Defer Call” (cable), July 13, 1961, RIF# 104-10175-10016.

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“Benito” had decided to do the “movie” Jean Pierson, “Telephone Conversation with AMUPAS/1 in Mexico” (memo), July 17, 1961, RIF# 104-10266-10021.

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The memo then stipulates that Cobb Jean Pierson (HQS) to Mexico City, “Request AMUPAS/1 Be Given $300 upon Receipt of Handwritten IOU” (cable), July 27, 1961, RIF# 104-10175-10015.

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explained away as a book advance Jean Pierson, “Telephone Conversation with AMUPAS/1 in Mexico” (memo), July 17, 1961, RIF# 104-10266-10021.

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“hospitalization” that suddenly excused G. J. to William Harvey (chief TFW), “Outstanding Loan” (memo), June 20, 1962, RIF# 104-10266-10158.

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a debriefing in late July HQS to Luxembourg, “Please Tell QJWIN Rabney Would Like to Meet Him” (cable), July 6, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10041.

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QJWIN’s debriefing wound up being HQS to Frankfurt, “Rabney Will Be in Fran 27 or 28 July for Meeting with QJWIN” (cable), RIF# 104-10185-10042.

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QJWIN received a $200 payment “Receipts for Funds—Andre Mankel,” RIF# 104-10185-10423, p. 3 (last entry).

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$200 for an “advance” and $100 Jean Pierson, “Telephone Conversation with AMUPAS/1 in Mexico” (memo), July 17, 1961, RIF# 104-10266-10021.

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9.10 Follow the Money

always signed on a signature line “Receipts for Funds—Andre Mankel,” RIF# 104-10185-10423.

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the hotel’s logo, address, and dates Luxembourg to William Harvey, “Receipts for QJWIN Accounting” (dispatch), March 8, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10369.

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when she wasn’t handing Cobb money Jean Pierson, “New York Trip, ⅔ Nov. 1960, Cobb” (memo for the record), November 4, 1960, RIF# 104-10175-10303.

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was sending it via Western Union Jean Pierson, “Telephone Conversation with Cobb” (memo), October 29, 1960, RIF# 104-10175-10190.

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for covert delivery Jean Pierson (HQS) to Mexico City, “Request AMUPAS/1 Be Given $300 upon Receipt of Handwritten IOU” (cable), July 27, 1961, RIF# 104-10175-10129, pp. 1–2, para. 3.

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breach their security by revealing their William Harvey (chief Kutube/D) to Luxembourg, “Lauricle ZRRIFLE/QJWIN” (dispatch), June 7, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10047, pp. 1–2, sec. 3.

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QJWIN always called in for instructions Luxembourg to HQS, “QJWIN Termination,” April 24, 1964, RIF# 104-10054-10104.

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when they signed for their November QJWIN in Paris: Luxembourg to HQS, “Subject Now in Paris” (cable), October 27, 1960; “Receipts for Funds—Andre Mankel,” RIF# 104-10185-10423, pay slips.

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They were away spotting criminals HQS to Luxembourg, “Pls Tell QJWIN Rabney Would Like to Meet Him Wiesbaden Sometime Last Few Days July” (cable), July 6, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10041: “Receipts for Funds—Andre Mankel,” RIF# 104-10185-10423, pay slips.

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living full time in Baden-Baden Luxembourg to HQS, “QJWIN Instructed to Move to Baden Baden” (cable), September 19, 1962, RIF# 104-10185-10341. This document is one of many about QJWIN’s Baden-Baden relocation.

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they had when living in Luxembourg Luxembourg to William Harvey (pseud. Presland, chief Kutube/D), “Five Dispatches Transmitting QJWIN Receipts” (dispatches), April 12, 1963, RIF# 104-10185-10431. This document contains a sampling of QJWIN’s 1963 receipts but not all of them.

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their salaries both ended on For QJWIN’s salary: “Payments to QJWIN,” January 31, 1961, RIF# 104-10103-10299. For Cobb’s salary: “Joyce H. Pineinch Amendment to Oral Agreement,” November 1, 1961, RIF# 104-10266-10147.

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both were paid in spot payments For QJWIN spot pay example: HQS to Luxembourg, “Please Expedite Dispatch” (cable), February 23, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10053. For Cobb spot pay: “Joyce H. Pineinch Amendment to Oral Agreement,” November 1, 1961, RIF# 104-10266-10147.

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resumed their monthly salaries in unison For QJWIN salary restart: HQS to Luxembourg, “Pls Contact QJWIN and Pay Him $600 Salary for May,” May 29, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10049. For Cobb salary restart: “Joyce H. Pineinch Amendment to Oral Agreement,” November 1, 1961, RIF# 104-10266-10147.

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both were retroactively paid their May For QJWIN: HQS to Luxembourg, “Pls Contact QJWIN and Pay Him $600 Salary for May,” May 29, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10049. For Cobb: Jean Pierson (HQS) to Mexico City, “Pls Contact AMUPAS/1” (cable), July 17, 1961, RIF# 104-10175-10017.

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same week ZRRIFLE was William Harvey to cable secretariat, “Distribution—ZRRIFLE Traffic” (cable), May 24, 1961 RIF# 104-10514-10007.

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June Cobb moved to Mexico City Jean Pierson to Mexico City, “JMZIP Asset Traveling in Mexico,” June 6, 1961, RIF# 104-10175-10020.

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QJWIN’s $1,000-a-month salary “Payments to QJWIN,” January 31, 1961, RIF# 104-10103-10299.

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June’s poverty pay of $100 “Joyce H. Pineinch Amendment to Oral Agreement,” November 1, 1961, RIF# 104-10266-10147, p. 1, para. 3.

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put her in dire financial straits The poverty threshold for an unmarried female head of household in 1961 was $1,430, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s historical data at Census.gov.

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“We [the CIA] were attempting to arrive” Jean Pierson, “AMUPAS/1 Trip to Washington” (memo), March 23, 1961, RIF# 104-10175-10071.

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didn’t receive a Social Security number Lucille F. Twogood to Office of Security, “Social Security Account Application for June Cobb,” August 5, 1963, RIF# 104-10111-10198.

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things like book royalties Jean Pierson, “Telephone Conversation with AMUPAS/1 in Mexico” (memo), July 17, 1961, RIF# 104-10266-10021.

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business trips Mexico City to HQS, “Request Authorization Pay AMUPAS/1” (cable), November 28, 1961, RIF# 104-10175-10327.

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agency-sponsored parties Jean Pierson, “New York Trip, ⅞ Nov” (memo for the record), November 9, 1960, RIF# 104-10175-10299, para. 4.

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to cover a hospitalization G. J. Zogby to William Harvey (chief TFW), “Outstanding Loan” (memo), August 20, 1961, RIF# 104-10266-10158.

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received the equivalent of $100 “Pages of Long Distance Telephone Receipts for Ops Expenses for QJWIN,” RIF# 1993.08.12.13:12:47:060005.

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Pierson wired $100 to her Jean Pierson, “AMUPAS/1 Trip to Washington,” March 23, 1961, RIF# 104-10175-10071.

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advance for travel to meet Silver Luxembourg to HQS, “QJWIN Available. Will Be Briefed and Funded” (cable), March 21, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10366.

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Jeri signed this routing slip “This Is a Separate Cover Attachment to Some QJWIN Material” (official routing slip), December 6, 1963, RIF# 104-10178-10451. See also: Reel 14, Folder L, “QJWIN ZRRIFLE,” RIF# 1994.04.06.10:53:49:40005, pp. 22–23. The year on the slip is determined by the materials it was attached to.

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9.11 Recruiting Criminals

When Silver finally narrowed the list Arnold Silver to William Harvey, “On ZRRIFLE” (memo), July 3, 1962, RIF# 104-10185-10030.

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QJWIN got a lead Luxembourg to HQS, “QJWIN Trip to Italy” (dispatch), March 3, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10370, p. 2, secs. 6, 7, and 8.

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later considered for use Arnold Silver to William Harvey, “On ZRRIFLE” (memo), July 3, 1962, RIF# 104-10185-10030, p. 1, sec. 1.

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Aldo Barletta, an Italian safecracker Luxembourg to HQS, “QJWIN Trip to Italy” (dispatch), March 3, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10370, p. 2, sec. 8.

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Enter Arthur Balletti, a wiretapper Robert Maheu testimony, Church Committee, U.S. Senate, September 23, 1975, RIF# 157-10011-10049, pp. 3–10. See also Robert Maheu testimony, Church Committee, U.S. Senate, July 29, 1975, RIF# 157-10011-10047, pp. 35–40.

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“seventeen professional type lock picks” S. A. Kuykendall, “Arthur James Balletti” (FBI report), November 10, 1960, RIF# 124-10216-10000, p. 1.

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There were only two petty hoodlums QJWIN’s “Hugh” or “Hugo” may be code for CIA subcontractor Robert Maheu, who fulfilled a role as middleman to the agency’s criminals: Robert Maheu testimony, Church Committee, U.S. Senate, July 29, 1975, RIF# 157-10011-10047.

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QJWIN hid behind Santelli Luxembourg to HQS, “Identification of Candidates” (dispatch), December 15, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10350.

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“Santelli enquired into their” Ibid., p. 1, sec. 1 (QJWIN scouts the location); p. 1, sec. 2 (checks ID at booking); p. 1, sec. 2 (Santelli conducts interview); pp. 1–2, sec. 3 (same routine used for both criminals).

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Gartoni was too “flamboyant” Ibid., p. 1, sec. 2.

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a dated receipt was tucked “Pages of Long Distance Telephone Receipts for Ops Expenses for QJWIN,” RIF# 1993.08.12.13.12:47:060005, p. 6.

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The duo stayed one night S. A. Harold Dodge, “Johnny Roselli” (FBI report), November 22, 1961,1962, RIF# 124-10224-10016, p. 7.

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Friedman, like Roselli, was connected Freedman, also like Roselli, later agreed to work for the government as an FBI informant. Rachael Levy, “Mob Bust Has Old LV [Las Vegas] Links,” Las Vegas Sun, March 10, 1996.

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Santelli and QJWIN repeated the mission Luxembourg to HQS, “Identification of Candidates” (dispatch), December 15, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10350, pp. 1–2, sec. 3.

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Another receipt from the Swiss hotel “Pages of Long Distance Telephone Receipts for Ops Expenses for QJWIN,” RIF# 1993.08.12.13.12:47:060005, p. 6.

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Pion was eventually put on hold Arnold Silver to William Harvey, “On ZRRIFLE” (memo), July 3, 1962, RIF# 104-10185-10030.

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“would use him” Ibid., p. 3, para. 1.

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strongly recommended Pion Luxembourg to HQS, “Identification of Candidates” (dispatch), December 15, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10350, p. 2, sec. 3.

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thinning hair and good nerves Arnold Silver to William Harvey, “On ZRRIFLE” (memo), July 3, 1962, RIF# 104-10185-10030, p. 3, para. 1.

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“lived in an inn” Luxembourg to HQS, “Identification of Candidates” (dispatch), December 15, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10350, p. 2, sec. 3.

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one major player fits the description Warren Commission Report (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1964), pp. 800–801.

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Jack Ruby’s strip club, the Carousel Seth Kantor, Who Was Jack Ruby? (New York: Everest House, 1978).

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9.12 Judy Campbell

Campbell’s affair with Kennedy began Judith Exner, My Story (New York: Grove Press, 1977), p. 86.

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simultaneously with her Kennedy affair Ibid., chaps. 5–12.

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they usually communicated by phone The FBI first became aware of Campbell in January 1961, when a phone call to her Los Angeles residence was made from Giancana’s hotel room in Miami. At the time the bureau was investigating Roselli’s intersection with Balletti, Maheu, and Giancana. SA Harold Dodge, untitled FBI Los Angeles office report on the activities of Johnny Roselli, June 27, 1961, RIF# 124-10224-10008, p. 5 (Giancana phoned Campbell), pp. B-D (part of investigation into Balletti and Roselli).

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spotted with Johnny Roselli SA Harold Dodge, untitled FBI Los Angeles office report on the activities of Johnny Roselli, February 16, 1962, RIF# 124-10226-10002, p. 18.

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much more frequent contact Campbell lived in Los Angeles, where Roselli spent a lot of time, and Roselli phoned her regularly. SAC LA to FBI director (FBI airtel), February 27, 1962, RIF# 124-10226-10019, p. 3 (Roselli called Campbell from hotel while with Friedman), p. 4 (Campbell called Roselli in Las Vegas).

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she occasionally visited the White House Entries for Judy Campbell including May 5, August 8, and October 11, 1961, White House Gate Logs, “Events, 1961,” John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

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Kennedy happily took her calls I have logged over fifty calls that Campbell made to the White House in 1961 and 1962. Papers of John F. Kennedy, Presidential Papers, Misc. Presidential Files, “White House Telephone Memorandums,” John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

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a long illness in May 1960 Exner, My Story, pp. 155–58.

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she was depressed, drinking heavily Ibid., p. 180.

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jet-black and gorgeous Ibid., photo series between pp. 152 and 153.

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a series of TV interviews Judith Exner, interview (video), December 18, 1975, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=cFupAqD93aI; Exner interviews by Barbara Walters and CBS News (video), YouTube, e.g., https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=gn_Ndtw7qkY.

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“CAMPBELL furnished her name” SA Harold Dodge, untitled FBI Los Angeles office report on the activities of Johnny Roselli, February 16, 1962, RIF# 124-10226-10002, p. 24.

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“On January 24, 1962, LA T-81” Ibid., pp. 24–25.

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“On January 11, 1962, ROSSELLI [sic]” Ibid., p. 18.

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her number was 324-3879 Ibid., p. 24.

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left her return number White House telephone memorandum, November 10, 1961, Papers of John F. Kennedy, Presidential Papers, Misc. Presidential Files, “White House Telephone Memorandums,” John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

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FBI learned that the woman SAC, WFO to FBI director (FBI airtel), February 21, 1962, RIF# 124-10226-10014.

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Robert Kennedy was the first FBI director to attorney general, “Re: John Roselli” (letter), February 27, 1962, FBI FOIA Reading Room, FBI.gov. The original document is not searchable in the FBI archive because it was found as a mirror image on a carbon copy.

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after which JFK was informed The Church Committee reported that Hoover met with President Kennedy about the Campbell matter on March 22, 1962: Church Committee, U.S. Senate, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders: An Interim Report (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975), pp. 129–30.

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FBI dispatched a surveillance team SAC Los Angeles to FBI director (FBI airtel), March 24, 1962, RIF# 124-10225-10037.

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“On March 14th, 1962, LA T-81” SA Harold Dodge, untitled FBI Los Angeles office report on the activities of Johnny Roselli, April 10, 1962, RIF# 124-10225-10055, p. 31.

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Hoover sent a memo FBI director to attorney general, “Re: John Roselli” (letter), February 27, 1962, FBI FOIA Reading Room, FBI.gov.

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had lunch with the president Church Committee, Alleged Assassination Plots, pp. 129–30. Campbell had been calling the White House for days. She and the president spoke the evening after the Hoover meeting. White House telephone memorandum, March 22, 1962, Papers of John F. Kennedy, Presidential Papers, Misc. Presidential Files, “White House Telephone Memorandums,” John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

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she used aliases during her affair Exner, My Story, p. 143. Note that Campbell says her “first alias,” given to her by Giancana, was “Miss Moore.”

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9.13 June Cobb’s Cover

took the star agent three years Many documents discuss QJWIN’s cover, but the termination document spells out that building cover was the main assignment for 1962 and 1963: Luxembourg to HQS, “QJWIN Termination” (dispatch), April 24, 1964, RIF# 104-10185-10444.

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Her most ardent pen pal was Richard Gibson to June Cobb, “Fair Play for Cuba Committee Activities in New York” (letter), July 25, 1961, RIF# 104-10266-10114.

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pro-Castro group that Oswald FBI Summary Report, September 24, 1964, Warren Commission Document 1, p. 37.

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dust jacket for the book Juan José Arévalo, The Shark and the Sardines (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1961).

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took out of the library before SA Yelchak, “Investigation at Public Libraries Concerning Lee Harvey Oswald” (FBI report), February 25, 1964, RIF# 1993.05.24.09:47:12:500000.

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connections between Cobb, Gibson, and Oswald Gibson thought he remembered Oswald visiting him at his FPCC offices in New York City: John G. Gossett, “Conversation AMEMB Paris, Mr. Richard Gibson” (Department of State documents), December 9, 1963, RIF# 104-10217-10328. On the day Oswald was killed, Gibson told a U.S. intelligence source that Oswald was “one of us”: CIA to FBI, State Department, and White House, “Re Statements Made by Richard Thomas Gibson Who Was Acquainted with Lee Harvey Oswald” (cable), November 27, 1963, RIF# 104-10015-10377. In 1961 the Office of Security denied that Gibson was a CIA agent, contradicting FBI sources claiming he was one: Sheffield Edwards to FBI director, “Sub. Richard Thomas Gibson” (memo), June 8, 1961, RIF# 1993.08.10.18:04:22:960044. In July 1962, Gibson sent two letters to the CIA offering his services: Reel 52, Folder H, “Richard Gibson,” RIF# 1994.04.26.09:35:40:220005, pp. 45–47. CIA paperwork from 1976 states that Gibson was on the agency payroll: “Contract Agreement,” October 25, 1976, RIF# 104-10106-10042.

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using one of her aliases “Miss C. Sharp, Mexico” (photocopy of envelope), ca. 1962, RIF# 104-10217-10458. See also “Request for Green List Name Check—Viola June Cobb Alias Clarinda E. Sharp” (form), September 5, 1962, RIF# 104-10175-10119.

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his contacts with “Sam Freedman” John Lewine to June Cobb, “Note Regarding Fair Play for Cuba,” ca. summer 1961, RIF# 104-10266-10087.

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“Rose Siminow” Richard Gibson to June Cobb, “Regarding 2 Medical Books Being Sent” (letter), August 11, 1961, RIF# 104-10266-10113.

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aspects of the Shark book jacket Gibson delivered the first draft of the dust jacket to Cobb in August 1961: Richard Gibson to June Cobb, “Regarding Book the Shark and the Sardines” (letter with envelope), August 22, 1961, RIF# 104-10266-10112.

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another woman of Cobb’s choosing Diane Alexandria to June Cobb, “Friendly Gossip and Catching Up with Old Friend” (letter), June 8, 1961, RIF# 104-10266-10126.

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as his secretary at Fair Play Richard Gibson to June Cobb, “Re Fair Play for Cuba Activities in New York” (letter), July 25, 1961, RIF# 104-10266-10114.

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“the possibility of facing” Richard Gibson to June Cobb, “Regarding 2 Medical Books Being Sent” (letter), August 11, 1961, RIF# 104-10266-10113.

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engagement to Fidel Castro’s bodyguard Dorothy Kilgallen, syndicated column, Asbury Park Press, July 10, 1959.

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“help with the script” Jean Pierson, “Telephone Call with AMUPAS/1 in Mexico” (memo), July 17, 1961, RIF# 104-10266-10021.

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to see her in person Richard Gibson to June Cobb, “Regarding 2 Medical Books Being Sent” (letter), August 11, 1961, RIF# 104-10266-10113.

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the trip to see June instead Ibid. “John Lewine of New York City” is listed on the Mexico City to New York flight manifest, August 31, 1961, National Archives, via Ancestry.com.

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admitted he was working with Gibson John Lewine to June Cobb, “Addressed to Technical Publishers” (letter and two envelopes), September 6, 1961, RIF# 104-10175-10341.

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“I shall try to procure” John Lewine to June Cobb, “Regarding Nicaraguan Painting and Fair Play for Cuba Committee,” October 1, 1961, RIF# 104-10266-10109, one of two letters.

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“Two of the people” John Lewine to June Cobb (letter), October 12, 1961, RIF# 104-10266-10109.

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with a bag full of communist literature Guatemala City to HQS, “AMUPAS/1 Arrived Guat 3 November” (cable), November 8, 1961, RIF# 104-10175-10334.

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June’s expulsion ran in dozens “Writer Expelled,” (AP) Daily Oklahoman, November 10, 1961.

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calling out her recent arrest John J. D. Moore, chairman of United States Inter-American Council, letter to the editor, New York Times, December 28, 1961.

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Cobb sent her own letter June Cobb, letter to the editor, Time, January 19, 1962.

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The Senate located Cobb CIA HQS to Mexico City, “Counsel for House Sub-Committee on Internal Security Has Asked Kubark” (cable), March 16, 1962, RIF# 104-10175-10155.

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deferred to the CIA Redacted CIA officer, “Licookie-1” (memo for the record), March 28, 1962, RIF# 104-10175-10147.

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she wanted to testify Mexico City to HQS, “On 20 Mar Licooky Agreed” (cable), March 22, 1962, RIF# 104-10175-10378.

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to whom Pierson was reporting Jean Pierson, “C/WH/POA Called to Inform the Undersigned that June Sharp Cobb Was Arriving in Washington,” March 29, 1962, RIF# 104-10175-10146.

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Seventy-two hours before June appeared Jerrie Cobb to FLATS (First Lady Astronaut Trainees) (letter) April 5, 1962, Myrtle Thompson Cagle Collection, International Women’s Air and Space Museum. In this letter, Jerrie describes her recent attendance at Dr. Teller’s testimony, a session that according to congressional records was held on March 27, 1962.

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“The lady was ushered into” Drew Pearson, “Washington Merry-Go-Round” (syndicated column), Daily Press (Newport News, Va.), April 13, 1962.

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but asked to go off the record Viola June Cobb testimony, Hearing Before the Senate Judiciary Sub-Committee on Internal Security, March 30, 1962, RIF# 104-10218-10384, p. 5.

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authorized its release to the public Allan Cromley, “Sooner Airs Her Mysterious Past,” Daily Oklahoman, May 23, 1966.

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The first four pages were read Jean Pierson, “Bio Info on June Sharp Cobb,” March 29, 1962, RIF# 104-10266-10143. Pierson is not listed as this document’s author, but we can infer that she was from the context of other documents. See also Jean Pierson, “C/WH/POA Called to Inform the Undersigned that June Sharp Cobb Was Arriving in Washington,” March 29, 1962, RIF# 104-10175-10146.

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The deadly minutiae dragged on Viola June Cobb testimony, Hearing Before the Senate Judiciary Sub-Committee on Internal Security, March 30, 1962, RIF# 104-10218-10384, pp. 1–4.

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“Anderson was interested in persuading Subject” Jean Pierson, “June Cobb” (memo for the record), April 2, 1962, RIF# 104-10175-10145.

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CIA had a propaganda operation Mockingbird is listed and described on the cryptonym database at MaryFerrell.org.

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this incident is exhibit A Carl Bernstein, “The CIA and the Media,” Rolling Stone, October 22, 1977.

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mailed the approved manuscript to Anderson Mexico City to HQS, “Newspaper Article, June Cobb” (dispatch), May 18, 1962, RIF# 104-10266-10010.

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delivered to every corner of America Jack Anderson, “Meet June Cobb: She’s a Soldier of Fortune,” Parade, August 12, 1962.

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mission to China for the OSS Patricia Sullivan, “Investigative Journalist Jack Anderson Dies,” Washington Post, December 18, 2005.

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Oswald was stepping off a ship “Lee Harvey Oswald” is listed on the manifest for the vessel Maasdam, arriving in New York City on June 13, 1962, National Archives, via Ancestry.com.

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9.14 Jerrie Cobb’s Cover

twelve others had joined her “12 Women to Take Astronaut Tests,” (AP) New York Times, January 26, 1961.

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met at an astronautics conference Ruby Clayton McGee, “Jacqueline Cochran Stresses Top Role for Women in Space,” Dallas Morning News, January 18, 1961. Jerrie and Cochran were pictured together for this article. See also Jean Pearson, “Moon Dust: It May Handicap Explorers of Space,” Detroit Free Press, January 17, 1961.

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new phase of women’s skill testing Jacqueline Cochran, “Women in Space,” Parade, April 30, 1961.

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join her on Jackie Cochran’s dime Martha Ackmann, The Mercury 13 (New York: Random House, 2003), chap. 8.

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space flight arranged by our film Our producing team was organizing an approach to the private space companies in late 2010.

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“an all out program” Jerrie Cobb to FLATS (First Lady Astronaut Trainees) (letter), April 5, 1962, Myrtle Thompson Cagle Collection, International Women’s Air and Space Museum.

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“Perhaps I did not make” Jerrie Cobb to NASA director James Webb (letter), March 30, 1962, NASA HQ Historical Reference Collection.

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“Women in Space Earliest” “Remarks of Miss Jerrie Cobb at Space Symposium for Women” (transcript from press release), Air Force Association Convention, Las Vegas, September 21, 1962, Jerrie Cobb Collection, 99s Museum of Women Pilots, Oklahoma City.

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up in the same capsule Allan Cromley, “Can Two Orbit Cheap as One?” Oklahoma City Times, March 17, 1962.

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swapping places with a female chimpanzee Neal Stanford, “High G,” Christian Science Monitor, October 3, 1962.

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“up there soon—this year anyway” “Jerrie Is After That Space Girl Title,” Evening News (London), March 13, 1962.

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a cause she would die for Jerrie Cobb to NASA director James Webb (letter), March 30, 1962, NASA HQ Historical Reference Collection.

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“Even if I knew” Jan Mellow, “Blonde Flyer Goal Is to Be First Woman in Space Travel,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, October 1, 1962.

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“I feel if we do a poor job” Bea Steadman to Jerrie Cobb (letter), August 24, 1962, Bea Steadman Collection, International Women’s Air and Space Museum.

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“irrational manner” R. P. Young, NASA executive officer, “Meeting Between the Administrator and Jerrie Cobb” (memo for the record), December 27, 1962. I received this document in response to my FOIA request to NASA.

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Johnson was polite to her “Women as Astronauts: Two Ask Johnson to Act on Plan, but He Demurs,” New York Times, March 16, 1962.

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“Let’s stop this now!” Lyndon Johnson to James Webb (letter), March 15, 1962, Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library.

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increasingly bitter and acidic Bill Moore, “Still Struggling to Get a Chance at Space,” Kansas City Star, September 28, 1962.

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she appeared under oath Jerrie Cobb testimony, Committee on Science and Astronautics, U.S. House of Representatives, 87th Congress, 2nd session, July 17–18, 1962.

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9.15 QJWIN Almost Ruined

“QJBANNER-5 states QJWIN” William Harvey to Luxembourg, “QJWIN Going on Trial After Easter” (cable), April 18, 1962, RIF# 104-10185-10033.

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I came across the only major “Cobalt Smuggling Ring Is Cracked,” Odessa American, June 18, 1958. See also Subchapter 5.5.

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station chief in West Berlin William Harvey testimony, Church Committee, U.S. Senate, June 25, 1975, RIF# 157-10002-10105, p. 6.

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switched the incident to a nickel Brussels to HQS, “Re: Henri Joseph Vincent” (cable), February 4, 1955, RIF# 104-10079-10364.

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“Per QJWIN, LUXE customs” Luxembourg to HQS, “Per QJWIN, Luxe Customs Prosecuting Nickel Smuggling Charge” (cable), April 26, 1962, RIF# 104-10185-10345.

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in a memo named June Cobb Deputy director of security to William Harvey (chief TFW), “Viola June Cobb” (memo), May 9, 1962, RIF# 104-10248-10214.

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Two years earlier the FBI had broadly Anita Potocki to William Harvey, “ZRGRACE Investigation—Orally from Joe Noell,” September 20, 1960, RIF# 104-10176-10094.

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QJWIN’s problem went away Luxembourg to HQS, “Per QJWIN, Luxe Customs Prosecuting Nickel Smuggling Charge” (cable), April 26, 1962, RIF# 104-10185-10345.

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“COBB, Viola June” Deputy director of security to William Harvey (chief TFW), “Viola June Cobb” (memo), May 9, 1962, RIF# 104-10248-10214.

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9.16 Oswald Returns

only one city ever given consideration Luxembourg to HQS, “Future Cover and Move to Germany” (dispatch), February 2, 1962, RIF# 104-10185-10349.

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“maybe we’ll be able to settle” Lee Harvey Oswald to Marguerite Oswald (letter), December 13, 1961, Warren Commission Exhibit 187.

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Two days later Luxembourg told Harvey Luxembourg to HQS, “Identification of Candidates” (dispatch), December 15, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10350, p. 2, sec. 6.

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find a cover job in Germany Luxembourg to HQS, “Future Cover and Move to Germany” (dispatch), February 2, 1962, RIF# 104-10185-10349.

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astronautics conference in Washington In mid-January, Jerrie attended the American Astronautics Society banquet in Washington, D.C., where she heard a speech given by Dr. Edward Welsh: Jerrie Cobb to Dr. Welsh (letter), January 24, 1962, Jerrie Cobb Personal Collection. The date and location of Welsh’s speech can be determined from “U.S. Space Progress Lauded,” Arizona Daily Star, January 18, 1962.

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or to establish an art dealership Luxembourg to HQS, “Future Cover and Move to Germany” (dispatch), February 2, 1962, RIF# 104-10185-10349.

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“French schooling” Ibid.

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QJWIN’s “family” was expected Ibid., p. 1, para. 4.

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matching Oswald’s anticipated arrival Lee Harvey Oswald to Robert Oswald (letter), May 1962, Warren Commission Exhibit 318.

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Dallas Armed Forces Day Parade “Jerrie Cobb Will Serve as Judge,” Dallas Morning News, May 14, 1962.

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not-yet-famous Dealey Plaza Advertisement listing the parade route in “Armed Forces Day Parade,” Dallas Morning News, May 18, 1962.

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most were mentioned in the investigation Ed Bernet, listed in Ruby’s address book; Tony Zoppi, Ruby called him from jail; Joe Reichman, bandleader who was in Ruby’s social circle; Jack Sweet, name was found in Ruby’s notebook, and he ran the hotel where Oswald’s family was sequestered after the crime; Dick Hitt, journalist and friend that Ruby visited at work.

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“Baden Baden Per OLLA” William Harvey (HQS) to Luxembourg, “QJWIN Contract Extended to Mar 63” (cable), May 24, 1962, RIF# 104-10185-10004, p. 1, para. 2.

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Oswald arrived in the Fort Worth “Lee Harvey Oswald” is listed on the passenger manifest for vessel Maasdam arriving in New York City on June 13, 1962, National Archives, via Ancestry.com.

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followed by several transient rentals Mrs. Lee Harvey Oswald testimony, Warren Commission Hearings, February 3, 1964, p. 4.

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a series of housing surveys Luxembourg to HQS, “QJWIN Investigations Re Ref Cover Encouraging” (cable), June 19, 1962, RIF# 104-10185-10342; and Luxembourg to HQS, “QJWIN Instructed to Move to Baden Baden” (cable), September 18, 1962, RIF# 104-10185-10341. See also Luxembourg to HQS, “QJWIN Moving to Baden Baden 15 November, Address” (cable), November 5, 1962, RIF# 104-10185-10339.

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9.17 The July 2 Decision

Gathering at headquarters just three weeks Arnold Silver to William Harvey, “On ZRRIFLE” (memo), July 3, 1962, RIF# 104-10185-10030. I suspect QJWIN attended this meeting because on July 2, 1962, a cable was drafted from Harvey’s Division TFW/FI that was signed by someone with the initials “JC”: HQS to redacted and JMWAVE, “DTDORIC Rep Will Discuss Possibilities” (cable), July 2, 1962, RIF# 104-10215-10091. This cable pertains to the defection of Rolando Cubela, who would later figure into another CIA assassination plot targeting Castro.

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“the July decision for the operation” Luxembourg to HQS, attn: Presland (Harvey), “QJWIN Receipts” (dispatch), December 7, 1962, RIF# 104-10185-10336, p. 1, sec. 3.

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pondered QJWIN’s relocation Arnold Silver to William Harvey, “On ZRRIFLE” (memo), July 3, 1962, RIF# 104-10185-10030.

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“While we do not know” Luxembourg to HQS, “Per QJWIN, Luxe Customs Prosecuting Nickel Smuggling Charge” (cable), April 26, 1962, RIF# 104-10185-10345, p. 1, sec. 4.

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He liked QJWIN for this role Arnold Silver (pseud. James Rabney) to HQS, “Based on Info from QJWIN” (cable), April 14, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10363. See also Subchapter 9.7.

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“if needed” Arnold Silver to William Harvey, “On ZRRIFLE” (memo), July 3, 1962, RIF# 104-10185-10030.

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9.18 Jerrie Targets Kennedy

“Respectfully request appointment” Jerrie Cobb to President Kennedy (telegram), July 20, 1962, NASA HQ Historical Reference Collection.

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JFK punted her to NASA Kenneth O’Donnell to NASA administrator, “An Appointment with the President Is Not Possible” (White House office routing slip), July 26, 1962, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

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“impossible” James Webb, NASA administrator, to Jerrie Cobb (letter), August 3, 1962, NASA HQ Historical Reference Collection.

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“If you would just give me” Jerrie Cobb to James Webb, August 7, 1962, NASA HQ Historical Reference Collection.

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fired off a second telegram Jerrie Cobb to President Kennedy (telegram), August 13, 1962, NASA HQ Historical Reference Collection.

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pressure campaign of wires and letters Jerrie Cobb to FLATS (First Lady Astronaut Trainees) (letter), August 15, 1962, Myrtle Thompson Cagle Collection, International Women’s Air and Space Museum.

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a curt and pointed rejection James Webb to Jerrie Cobb (letter), August 20, 1962, NASA HQ Historical Reference Collection.

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“It is difficult to write” Jerrie Cobb to President Kennedy (letter), March 13, 1963, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

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“rush basis” Ibid.

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“maximum amount of experience” James Webb to Jerrie Cobb (letter), April 5, 1963, NASA HQ Historical Reference Collection.

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“silly” Jane Mellow, “Blonde Flier’s Goal Is to Be First Woman in Space Travel,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, October 1, 1962.

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offered to swap places with Glenda “Jerrie Cobb Rebuffed in Attempt to Swap Space Chimp’s Place,” Lawton Constitution (Okla.), July 11, 1963.

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“It is the jet test pilot experience” Jerrie Cobb testimony, Committee on Science and Astronautics, U.S. House of Representatives, 87th Congress, 2nd session, July 17, 18, 1962, pp. 12–14.

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“You aren’t slated to test” Wernher von Braun to Jerrie Cobb (letter), May 9, 1962, Jerrie Cobb Personal Collection.

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Jerrie was nowhere to be seen “Trouble Delays Civilian Jet’s First Flight,” Daily Oklahoman, January 26, 1963.

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She’d just relocated “Female Flier Takes to ’Copters,” Daily News–Texan (Grand Prairie), January 26, 1963.

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it was pictured in flight “New Plane in Test Flight,” Chicago Tribune, February 1, 1963.

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Jerrie was enrolled in an immersive Bell Helicopter press release, January 21, 1963, Papers of Jerrie Cobb, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University.

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certified on helicopters Jerrie Cobb, Completion of Bell Helicopter’s Commercial Pilot’s Training Certificate, February 13, 1963, Papers of Jerrie Cobb, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University.

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gliders Jerrie Cobb, Glider Certificate, August 8, 1963, Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center Archives, Jerrie Cobb Collection, Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.

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experimental jump balloons Photos of Jerrie Cobb testing jump balloons at Schjeldahl, August 1963, Papers of Jerrie Cobb, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University.

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“and she knew that” “Jerrie Cobb’s Astronaut Bid Called Late,” Star Tribune (Minneapolis), July 13, 1963.

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“I’ve logged thousands of jet hours” Jerrie Cobb, conversation with the author, Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, Washington, D.C, January 25, 2014.

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9.19 Bell Helicopter, Jerrie, and the Paines

“QJWIN now installed and working” Luxembourg to HQS, “Have Received No Answer” (cable), January 19, 1963, RIF# 104-10185-10408.

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The next day Jerrie Cobb was “Female Flier Takes to ’Copters,” Daily News–Texan (Grand Prairie), January 26, 1963. Jerrie flew the chopper on Sunday, which was January 20, 1963.

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She’d just completed her first day Bell Helicopter press release, January 21, 1963, Papers of Jerrie Cobb, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University.

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Whirly Girl number 53 International Women Helicopter Pilots press release, March 4, 1963, Whirly Girls, Women’s Collection, Texas Women’s University.

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“should stand up” Bell Helicopter press release, January 21, 1963, Papers of Jerrie Cobb, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University.

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she would be demonstrating a Bell Jerrie Cobb to Jean Ross Howard (letter), February 20, 1963, Women’s Collection, Texas Women’s University. Jean Ross Howard was a close associate of Jean Pearson’s, having graduated in the same WASP class of 43-W-3.

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excuse to be seen in Fort Worth I have been unable to confirm that Jerrie flew a Bell in the Paris show in 1963, but her claim that she would be participating provided her with a reason to be in Fort Worth.

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Michael, was a research engineer Ruth Paine testimony, Orleans Parish Grand Jury, April 18, 1968, pp. 2–6.

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Michael held a security clearance SAC Dallas to director of Boston and Philadelphia offices, “Ruth Hyde Paine / Michael Paine” (FBI report), December 9, 1963, RIF# 124-10130-10297. See also Warren Commission Report (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1964), p. 286.

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allegation that she had CIA ties The Assassination & Mrs. Paine, directed by Max Good (Journeyman Pictures, 2022). Ruth Paine appears extensively in this documentary and denies having any CIA ties or knowledge of a conspiracy.

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ultimately supporting the Oswalds Warren Commission Report, p. 286.

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chauffeuring them to and fro Ibid., p. 284.

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teaching Lee how to drive Ruth Hyde Paine testimony, Warren Commission Hearings, March 19, 1964, pp. 2:504–6.

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both a cliché and a book A detailed account of Ruth Paine’s relationship with the Oswalds, presented from her perspective, can be found in Thomas Mallon, Mrs. Paine’s Garage (New York: Pantheon Books, 2002).

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suggested the Book Depository job Warren Commission Report, pp. 14–15.

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the allure of practicing conversational Russian Ruth Hyde Paine testimony, Warren Commission Hearings, March 19, 1964, pp. 2:437–42.

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“Everything you do and say” Ruth Hyde Paine to Marina Oswald, numerous letters in 1963, Ruth Hyde Paine Papers on Marina Oswald, Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College.

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made highly unusual Quakers Warren Commission Report, p. 285. See also Ruth Hyde Paine and Michael Paine testimony, Warren Commission Hearings, March 19, 1964, pp. 2:386–87.

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military supplier for the war By 1966, Bell was supplying 90 percent of all U.S. military choppers. J’Nell L. Pate, Arsenal of Defense: Fort Worth’s Military Legacy (Denton: Texas State Historical Association, 2011), p. 146.

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9.20 Ruth Paine and Marilyn Murret

in search of better work Ruth Hyde Paine testimony, Warren Commission Hearings, March 19, 1964, pp. 2:457–60.

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he cold-called his aunt Marilyn Murret testimony, Warren Commission Hearings, April 6, 1964, pp. 8:164–65, 8:178.

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Ruth drove Marina Ruth Hyde Paine testimony, Warren Commission Hearings, March 19, 1964, pp. 2:468–78.

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same roof as his first cousin Marilyn Murret testimony, Warren Commission Hearings, April 6, 1964, pp. 8:164–65.

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circumnavigating the globe Ibid., p. 8:155 (Murret lists colleges), pp. 8:175–76 (Murret lists travels). See also “Re: Marilyn Dorothea Murret” (letterhead memorandum), May 7, 1964, Warren Commission Document 942.

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teaching at a local school Marilyn Murret testimony, Warren Commission Hearings, April 6, 1964, pp. 155–56.

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only university where she earned a “Marilyn D. Murret” (obituary), Times-Picayune (New Orleans), May 9, 2020.

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a history of bookmaking U.S. House of Representatives, Final Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979, pp. 11:96–98. See also “Special Jury Term in Progress, a Number of Cases Have Been Deposed,” St. Bernard Voice (Arabi, La.), July 16, 1921.

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Paine answered questions put to her Ruth Hyde Paine testimony, Warren Commission Hearings, March 18, 1964, pp. 2:430–517; and Ruth Hyde Paine testimony, Warren Commission Hearings, March 19, 1964, pp. 3:1–140.

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Two weeks later Murret was interviewed Marilyn Murret testimony, Warren Commission Hearings, April 6, 1964, pp. 8:154–80.

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were briefly in the same place Ibid., p. 169.

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drove north to see her family Ruth Paine testimony, Orleans Parish Grand Jury, April 18, 1968, pp. 55–62.

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who was a CIA employee Sylvia Hyde Hoke listed her employment with the CIA in the Falls Church telephone directory in 1961. Bruce Solie, “Security File on Sylvia Hyde Hoke” (memo), July 30, 1971, RIF# 1993.07.24.08:39:37:560310.

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Marilyn drove south, meandering across Mexico Marilyn Murret testimony, Warren Commission Hearings, April 6, 1964, p. 8:174.

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spent Labor Day with the Oswalds Ibid., p. 171.

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shuttled them back to Fort Worth Ruth Hyde Paine testimony, Warren Commission Hearings, March 19, 1964, pp. 2:485, 507.

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cited no fewer than nine universities SA Thomas B. Estep, Cincinnati FBI office, “FBI-105-82555 Oswald HQ File—Section 9” (FBI report of investigation), December 2, 1963, pp. 16–17.

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After that, she was off campus When the FBI tried to confirm Ruth’s short stint at Ohio State University, the school told investigators her records had been “destroyed”: SA Emil Hopkins, “Re: Ruth Paine” (FBI report), January 30, 1964, Warren Commission Document 417, p. 2.

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So did Marilyn Dorothea Murret Robert S. Allen and Paul Scott, “Worldwide Manhunt for U.S. Defectors” (syndicated column), Oakland Tribune, March 23, 1964.

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She was not asked Marilyn Murret testimony, Warren Commission Hearings, April 6, 1964.

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implied Paul Scott was unstable Washington field office to FBI director, “Harold Isaac—Americans Residing in the USSR” (FBI memo), May 7, 1964, RIF# 124-90080-10027, pp. 3, 5.

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“greatly upset high ranking” Paul Scott, “Spying Links Probed” (syndicated column), Tyler Courier-Times (Tex.), June 12, 1977.

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CIA even illegally wiretapped Scott’s phone John S. Warner, “Questionable Activities, Subject: CIA Violations” (memo for the record), January 8, 1975, RIF# 104-10107-10031, p. 6.

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9.21 Oswald and the Rifle in ZRRIFLE

renewed for the next year William Harvey (HQS) to Luxembourg, “Re QJWIN Contract Renewal Request” (cable), March 4, 1963, RIF# 104-10185-10453. Richard Helms, the DDP who replaced Richard Bissell, authorized ZRRIFLE’s final year of funding.

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drop by for a visit Marina Oswald to Ruth Paine (letter), March 4, 1963, Warren Commission Exhibit 404.

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Oswald mail-ordered the rifle FBI Summary Report, September 24, 1964, Warren Commission Document 1, p. 15.

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Marina snapped a picture of Lee Mrs. Lee Harvey Oswald testimony, Warren Commission Hearings, February 3, 1964, pp. 1:15–16.

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that would later appear on Life’s cover Life, February 21, 1964.

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Oswald took aim Warren Commission Report (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1964), pp. 183–87.

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that rifle would now be linked Ibid., p. 187. The ballistics on the rifle used to shoot at Walker were inconclusive but indicated a probable match to the rifle that fired at Kennedy. It was Oswald’s confession to Marina and a note he left her that linked him to the Walker shot.

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charging him with sedition and insurrection “Robert Kennedy Orders Arrest of Gen. Walker,” Jackson Sun (Tenn.), October 1, 1962.

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hailed as a hero “Jail Gen. Walker, Mob Leader,” Detroit Free Press, October 2, 1962.

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“scum” “What This CIA Widow Says About JFK, Jackie, RFK, and the Mafia Will Amaze You” (video), YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=iabXbtn5mUE. See also Bayard Stockton, Flawed Patriot: The Rise and Fall of CIA Legend Bill Harvey (Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2006), chap. 11.

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while toting a concealed pistol David C. Martin, “The CIA’s Loaded Gun,” Washington Post, October 10, 1962.

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Oswald contacted an organization where June Richard Gibson claimed he was glad he burned the letters Oswald sent him. Gibson left the FPCC in the fall of 1962, and it was his successor who fielded Oswald’s request to start a New Orleans FPCC chapter. Vincent T. Lee testimony, Warren Commission, April 17, 1964, pp. 10:86–95.

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A news crew filmed him For newsreel footage of Oswald distributing pamphlets and an interview with him filmed in mid-August 1963, see “WDSU Archives: WDSU Interview with Lee Harvey Oswald” (video), YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=tInqL3g6vJw.

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a scuffle resulting in his arrest SA Warren C. de Brueys, New Orleans FBI office, “Fair Play for Cuba Committee—New Orleans Division” (FBI report), October 25, 1963, RIF# 104-10087-10035.

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a radio appearance where he “Latin Listening Post with Bill Stuckey,” aired August 17, 1963; and “Conversation Carte Blanche” (radio debate), aired August 21, 1963, both on WDSU radio, Mary Ferrell Foundation, https://www.maryferrell.org/​pages/​Audio_-_Other.html.

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9.22 June Cobb and the KGB

“mistress” Mexico City to HQS, [withheld], January 24, 1963 (CIA cable), RIF# 104-10175-10101.

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Rettie made a name for himself Richard Gott, “John Rettie” (obituary), Guardian, January 19, 2009.

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MI6 asked the CIA Mexico City to HQS, “Ref Has Inquired ‘Off Record’ What Kubark Knows of Licooky” (cable), January 9, 1963, RIF# 104-10175-10103.

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file was teeming with warnings Jean Pierson, “WH/4/CI Asset Traveling in Mexico” (memo), June 5, 1961, RIF# 104-10175-10443.

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no mention of her communist bent Mexico City to HQS, [withheld], January 24, 1963 (CIA cable), RIF# 104-10175-10101.

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Rettie was suspected of having blown Mexico City to HQS, “On Evenings 5 March Snedder Told COS Most Confidentially About Termination,” March 6, 1963, RIF# 104-10175-10096.

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opted to stay mum Charlotte Bustos Videla, “Mr. Kanes of WE/6 Informed Me” (memo), March 13, 1963, RIF# 104-10175-10093.

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“exceptional caution” Edward P. Brown, “Instructions Sheet on Issuance of POA for Licooky-1” (form), March 8, 1963, RIF# 104-10218-10162.

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warning that Rettie was probably Mexico City to HQS, “Comments on Report of KGB Agent,” November 18, 1963, RIF# 104-10097-10297.

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his retirement in the English countryside Gott, “John Rettie.”

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he had been an MI6 agent Chief Domestic Operations Division to chief of base, New York (dispatch), November 29, 1967, in “Folder on Cobb, Viola June, Vol. VII,” RIF# 104-10266-10026, pp. 22; 1, para. 1c.

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was canceled due to someone’s failure Sara Prosser to chief WH/3/Mexico, “Form: Cancellation to Division—Licooky/1” (memo), October 28, 1963, RIF# 104-10175-10089.

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that glitch was resolved J. C. King (pseud. Oliver Galbond) (HQS) to Mexico City, “Terms of OA for Licooky-1” (dispatch), February 10, 1964, RIF# 104-10218-10153.

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woman, whom he would soon marry Mexico City to HQS, “10 Dec John Rettie and Vanda Summers Flying Dallas” (cable), December 11, 1963, RIF# 104-10516-10136.

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9.23 Woman into Space

Valentina Tereshkova beat her to it “First Woman in Space—Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova,” New York Times, June 17, 1963.

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Jerrie launched her ill-titled autobiography Jerrie Cobb and Jane Rieker, Woman into Space: The Jerrie Cobb Story (Hoboken, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963).

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nationally syndicated ten-part series Here is how the series ran in the Allentown, Pennsylvania, newspaper Morning Call, one of hundreds of local papers that carried the syndicated series. Part 1, “Exhaustive Bicycle Ride Was Last of Physical Tests,” July 8, 1963; Part 2, “Pigtailed 12 Year Old Learns to Fly,” July 9, 1963; Part 3, “College Forsaken for Softball, Flying,” July 10, 1963; Part 4, “She Wastes Time Hunting Field, Loses First Big Air Race,” July 11, 1963; Part 5, “At Last a Flying Job—to Peru, Too,” July 12, 1963; Part 6, “From Plane to Plane Came a Soft ‘I Love You,’ ” July 13, 1963; Part 7, “She Had an Itch to Set Flying Records,” July 15, 1963; Part 8, “Chance Meeting Brings Testing Offer,” July 16, 1963; Part 9, “Tilt Table Proves Nemesis to Many Strong Pilots,” July 17, 1963; Part 10, “12 Women Pass Physical Tests, but NASA Abandons Program,” July 18, 1963.

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They fell in love while Ibid. Jerrie’s romance with Ford was recounted in the newspaper series in parts 5 and 6. See also Cobb and Rieker, Woman into Space, chaps. 12–16, pp. 61–112.

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“The moment we landed” Jerrie Cobb, “From Plane to Plane Came a Soft ‘I Love You,’ ” Morning Call (Allentown, Pa.), July 13, 1963, an excerpt from Woman into Space.

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who had met and married Jack Mary Zerbel Hooper Ford, untitled memoir, undated, at Airtransportaux.com.

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managing Fleetways and raising his young Pamela Ford was born on June 2, 1946, California Birth Index 1905–1995, State of California Department of Health Services, via Ancestry.com.

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exotic locales sleeping with her husband Telegrams from Jack to Jerrie speak of their love as early as 1953. Jack Ford to Jerrie Cobb, numerous telegrams and letters 1953–55, Papers of Jerrie Cobb, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University.

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it could have ruined Jerrie Cobb The release of Jerrie’s book wasn’t the only time the Jack-Jerrie romance went public. Jack Ford acknowledged that the Hollywood movie The Lady Takes a Flyer (Universal Pictures, 1957), starring Lana Turner and Jeff Chandler, was based on his life. The plot involves a younger female pilot who tries to steal a married male pilot away from his wife and newborn baby. Bob Thomas, “Lady Takes a Flier—Film Advisor’s Story, Plot of New Movie,” Miami News, May 28, 1957.

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the face of a grieving family Jerrie and Mary Zerbel Ford were friends and maintained a loving correspondence while she was divorcing Jack. Mary Ford to Jerrie Cobb (letters), July 8 and 19, 1955, Papers of Jerrie Cobb, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University.

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9.24 Russian Intelligence Services

seeking a Russian travel visa Warren Commission Report (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1964), pp. 284, 730–33.

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Neither embassy was in any hurry Ibid., pp. 733–36.

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Neither did the audiotapes Edwin Lopez and Dan Hardway, “Oswald, the CIA and Mexico City, aka the Lopez Report,” for the HSCA, January 2, 1979, RIF# 180-10110-10484, pp. 61–90 (missing original audiotapes), pp. 90–115 (discussion of missing photos).

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or someone impersonating him “Telephone Call Between the President and J. Edgar Hoover” (transcript), November 23, 1963, p. 2, via MaryFerrell.org.

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conversation with a KGB agent Warren Commission Report, pp. 285, 733–36.

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Department Thirteen, its elite assassination unit “CIA Information of 31 Jan 1964 re: Oswald’s Trip to Mexico,” RIF# 179-40002-10398, Warren Commission Document 347, p. 10.

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called the Russians on a tapped line Transcripts indicate Oswald met with Kostikov. See Edwin Lopez and Dan Hardway, “Oswald, the CIA and Mexico City, aka the Lopez Report,” for the HSCA, January 2, 1979, RIF# 180-10110-10484, pp. 78–79.

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“Comrade Kostin” Lee Harvey Oswald to Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C. (letter), November 9, 1963, Soviet Embassy File “Re: Lee Harvey Oswald,” Warren Commission Exhibit 986.

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holding its annual conference The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale’s general conference was held in Mexico City on October 12–20, 1963, FAI.org.

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big hand in organizing the event In 1963 Cochran was president of the Fédération Aéronautique. Fédération Aéronautique Internationale Files 1958–1964, Jacqueline Cochran Papers, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library. This collection holds numerous pieces of correspondence documenting her involvement in planning the conference.

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“extremely happy” Mary Jane Schier, “Miss Cobb Willing to Go into Space with Russian,” San Antonio Express, October 11, 1963.

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His job was to stay within The KGB agent who worked with Kostikov on the security detail wrote about the assignment in his memoir: Oleg Nechiporenko, Passport to Assassination: The Never Before Told Story of Lee Harvey Oswald by the KGB Colonel Who Knew Him (N.p.: Birch Lane Press, 1993), pp. 82–90.

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“The Soviets are utilizing their women” “Jerrie Cobb, She’s Ready for Space, but NASA Says No,” The News (D.F. Mexico), October 16, 1963, Papers of Jerrie Cobb, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University.

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specialized in arranging travel Mexico City to HQS, “Licooky—Field Project” outline attachment, “LICOOKY/50-6-129/1 Development and Plans” (dispatch), December 15, 1964, RIF# 104-10185-10159, p. 2, sec. D-1-b; pp. 40–42.

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Hours after June’s man was Mexico City to HQS, [illegible] (dispatch), October 8, 1963, RIF# 104-10266-10151. This important document is best viewed at NARA in its original form where more detail can be seen and portions of it can be read.

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Jerrie arrived in Mexico City Schier, “Miss Cobb Willing to Go into Space.”

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Why did Lee Harvey Oswald name June Oswald was born in the Soviet Union on February 15, 1962. The child was not born in June, and no one in Oswald’s family was named June.

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Interlude 9: The Frugal Millionaire

described in her second autobiography Jerrie Cobb, Solo Pilot (Jerrie Cobb Foundation, 1997), pp. 163–68.

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the Jerrie Cobb Foundation The Jerrie Cobb Foundation was granted nonprofit status by the IRS in 1969, according to Guidestar.org.

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taking a hiatus from South America Jerrie Cobb to author (email), January 28, 2011.

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she sold her Britten-Norman Islander In September 1988, an Islander with Jerrie’s tail number, N12JC, was transferred to a new owner. Scramble Civil Aviation Database, at Scramble.ni.

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but mostly pre-Columbian gold American Indian Art, Pre-Columbian and Tribal Art Signature Auction—Dallas no. 5216, Heritage Auctions, May 15, 2015. Many items listed in lot no. 71661 benefited the Jerrie Cobb Foundation, via ha.com.

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I quickly tabulated the asking prices Not all her items sold, and not all brought the asking price.

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there was one spectacular piece Sican Lambayeque Gold Atlatl, lot 9 in African, Oceanic, and Pre-Columbian Art Sale, Sotheby’s, May 15, 2015. The digital sale brochure is archived by the author.

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first carefully aiming, then using a Jerrie Cobb, interview by the author, March 13, 2010.

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The people who wait on you Author’s trip to Sotheby’s in New York, May 14, 2015.

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John Wise, who’d established John Wise handled the vast pre-Columbian gold collection of Minor C. Keith, president of United Fruit Company: “John Wise” (obituary), New York Times, June 15, 1981.

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Wise’s name had been attached to Douglass C. McGill, “Pre-Columbian Works Could Be Fakes,” New York Times, May 20, 1987.

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claim she lived hand to mouth Betty Wright, “Living a Useful Life,” Ninety-Nines News, March 1977, Texas Women’s Collection, Texas Women’s University, Denton. See also Meg Laughlin, “The Discarded Astronaut,” Miami Herald, June 12, 1983.

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art dealership as a part of Luxembourg to HQS, “Future Cover and Move to Germany” (dispatch), February 2, 1962, RIF# 104-10185-10349. In this document, QJWIN pitches the art dealership idea, where he would buy and sell art as a part of his cover.

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“Cologne” Luxembourg to HQS, “QJWIN” (dispatch), February 14, 1964, RIF# 104-10185-10328.

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$18,000 in expenses for the venture See these two documents in combination: Ibid.; and Luxembourg to HQS, “QJWIN Termination,” April 24, 1964, RIF# 104-10054-10104.

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a well-worn program Gold Before Columbus, an exhibition held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, March 19–May 15, 1964, Jerrie Cobb Personal Collection.

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glossy published a year later Andre Emmerich, Sweat of the Sun, Tears of the Moon (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1965).

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spectacular gold frogs and birds You can google “pre-Columbian gold” and “Jerrie Cobb,” and the search will yield pieces that were once in her collection.

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there was more to this visit Author’s trip to visit Jerrie Cobb at her home in Sun City Center, Florida, October 11–12, 2015. See also Interlude 7.

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Two days later I was released Author’s stay at Lancaster General Hospital, October 13–15, 2015.

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CHAPTER 10: THE BABUSHKA

10.1 The Magic Button

“A very sensitive and unusual” William Harvey testimony, Church Committee, U.S. Senate, June 25, 1975, RIF# 157-10002-10105, p. 59.

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“marksman” Office of Neuropsychiatry, Pensacola Naval Base to Aviation Examining Room, “Neuropsychiatric Evaluation in the Case of Jerrie Cobb,” May 24, 1961, p. 1, para. 1, Private Collection of Jerrie Cobb.

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her father, a national-caliber sharpshooter Jerrie Cobb and Jane Rieker, Woman into Space: The Jerrie Cobb Story (Hoboken, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963), pp. 7–8. Unpublished drafts of this book give more detail on her background with firearms: “Women into Space—Drafts,” Jerrie Cobb Collection, 99s Museum of Women Pilots, Oklahoma City.

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numerous snapshots of her posing with deer Photos of Jerrie hunting, Papers of Jerrie Cobb, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University.

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she scored the best tally Jerrie Cobb, conversation with the author, April 30, 2014.

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Jerrie stayed at the Greenbrier Carolyn Bell Hughes, “New Tune: Lady on the Moon,” Washington Post, September 6, 1961; and photographs of Jerrie at the Greenbrier bearing the date September 9, 1961, Papers of Jerrie Cobb, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University.

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Silver and Harvey were considering Silver proposed that QJWIN could handle personal spot action in April 1961: Arnold Silver (pseud. James Rabney) to HQS, “Based on Info from QJWIN” (cable), April 14, 1961, RIF# 104-10185-10363. QJWIN was still a contender for personal spot action a year later: Luxembourg to HQS, “Per QJWIN, Luxe Customs Prosecuting Nickel Smuggling Charge” (cable), April 26, 1962, RIF# 104-10185-10345, p. 1, sec. 4.

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At least three shots The House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that four shots were fired during the assassination. U.S. House of Representatives, Final Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979), pp. 41–52.

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limousine inexplicably slowed down The limousine slowdown, reported by so many witnesses, can be seen on the Zapruder film at https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=oi_8rwlXrJI; the Bronson film at https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=SBMgIIR398k; and the Muchmore film at https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=KqSEDtDk8gA&list=PL0O5WNzrZqINVGfqd-M73A_czSbI__hat&index=3.

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was the result of a conspiracy The House Select Committee on Assassinations’ four-shot conclusion necessitated a conspiracy: U.S. House of Representatives, Final Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations, pp. 41–52, 95.

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everyone agrees that the bullet that Ibid. The House Select Committee concluded that the fatal headshot originated from a rearward angle and from slightly above, matching the trajectory from Oswald’s sniper’s perch.

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Two steps behind them and peering While the Warren Report included reports from bystanders Jean Hill, Charles Brehm, and Mary Moorman (vol. 25), a more detailed workup on the bystanders on Dealey Plaza was created for a press article in 1970: Computers and Animation Magazine, May 1970, pp. 48–49.

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the Muchmore film Marie Muchmore was a middle-aged secretary from Oklahoma who claimed she hadn’t filmed the assassination, but she had. She was standing sixty-five feet behind the scene and zoomed in using a long lens. SA Robert Basham, “Interview with Maria Muchmore,” December 4, 1963, FBI 10-82555 Oswald HQ File, p. 49, sec. 16.

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I stabilized this film by keying “Haverstick’s Stabilized Muchmore Footage” and “Haverstick’s Stabilized Zapruder footage,” Haverstick Films channel, YouTube.

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positioned herself in back of Brehm Ibid.

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some material landing on the trunk The fatal shot is best seen on the Zapruder and Muchmore films.

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as it drifted away The author estimated the Babushka’s position after visiting Dealey Plaza and reviewing the available imagery.

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but also one from slightly above The Bronson film.

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By 1963, disguised guns had been “Curator’s Corner: Disguised Guns” (video), October 29, 2009, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=dGVNdAILXzc.

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hobbyists were experimenting with telescopic pistols Ted Trueblood, “A Pistol Is for Fun,” Field and Stream, September 1969.

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10.2 After the Shots

Babushka stood tall Wilma Bond, “Bond 4” (photograph), in Life, November 24, 1967, pp. 94–95. The Babushka is somewhat hidden in the magazine crease.

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claiming they were the Babushka Beverly Oliver, Nightmare in Dallas (N.p.: Starburst, 1994). See also Vincent Bugliosi, Reclaiming History (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1998), p. 1405.

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occurred in the first two minutes “Haverstick’s Multicam Composite of Dealey Plaza,” Haverstick Films channel, Youtube.com.

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her version to the Warren Commission Jean Lollis Hill testimony, Warren Commission Hearings, March 24, 1964, pp. 6:209–21.

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Mark Bell, the cameraman The Bell film, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=Mcpv3VgGL5I.

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exiting Dealey Plaza into the parking “Haverstick’s Multicam Composite of Dealey Plaza,” at 1 minute 41 seconds, Haverstick Films channel, Youtube.com.

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Moorman was now standing there alone Jay Skaggs, “Image of Dealey Plaza Taken Shortly After the Assassination,” photograph, Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, https://emuseum.jfk.org/​objects/​22057/​color-slide?ctx=8878895d5c68b1035e6e6747511344c21d3c81bf&idx=1. In this photo, the pedestrians seen in the Bell film behind Hill and Babushka are just a little farther along, meaning this image was shot seconds after Bell’s film showing Hill’s exit ended.

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clearly not the original Frank Cancellare (UPI), untitled photograph of crowd crossing Elm Street after JFK assassination, https://www.jfkassassinationgallery.com/​displayimage.php?album=33&pos=8.

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A group of onlookers clustered “Haverstick’s Multicam Composite of Dealey Plaza,” at 1 minute 56 seconds, Haverstick Films channel, YouTube.

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She was captured in a series William Allen (Dallas Times Herald), “Image from Contact Sheet of Crowd Gathered on Elm Street,” Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, https://emuseum.jfk.org/​objects/​3732/​image-10-from-negative-strip-26-dealey-of-a-small-crowd-gat?ctx=b9ce7bad79863bd09133d4653078bfa20f766e98&idx=10. There are three images of the Babushka in Allen’s series.

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after hearing news of the killing William Allen, interview (video), November 17, 2014, https://emuseum.jfk.org/​objects/​43269/​william-allen-oral-history?ctx=b9ce7bad79863bd09133d4653078bfa20f766e98&idx=0.

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10.3 Egress

“hollered at him” to “come here” Marion Baker testimony, Warren Commission Hearings, March 24, 1964, pp. 3:246–53, quote on p. 3:250.

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three minutes after the fatal shot Warren Commission Report (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1964), pp. 149–56.

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headed back toward the plaza Ibid., pp. 157–61.

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Oswald’s ticket was valid “SS Warner Report of 15 Jun 1964 re: Bus Routes in Jefferson-Marsalis Area,” Warren Commission Document 1128, pp. 1–2.

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and picked up his pistol Warren Commission Report, pp. 161–65.

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was pronounced dead at one p.m. Ibid., p. 55.

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He broke into a run Ibid., pp. 165–71.

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Residents nearby had called in the Dick Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1992), pp. 576, 788.

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without her body reliving a visceral Jerrie Cobb, conversation with the author, Sheraton Newark Airport Hotel, December 30, 2010. See Subchapter 1.5.

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At 1:38 p.m., Walter Cronkite “CBS News Announces President’s Death” (video), November 22, 1963, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=v4q898h05HQ.

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By two p.m., Oswald was Warren Commission Report, pp. 176–80.

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Oswald was first named Assassination timeline compiled by the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, https://www.jfk.org/​page-timeline/.

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“just before the airspace shut down” Jerrie Cobb, conversation with the author, Sheraton Newark Airport Hotel, December 30, 2010. See Subchapter 1.5.

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Air Force One departed Dallas Warren Commission Report, p. 59.

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10.4 To Mexico

“HQS has received report that” HQS to Mexico City, “HQS Received Report re Cuban Aircraft Delayed Departure on Day President Kennedy Was Assassinated” (classified message), December 1, 1963, RIF# 104-10404-10428.

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Jerrie’s plane could have then flown The flight distance from Redbird Airport to Mexico City International Airport is 925 miles. In her Aero Commander 680, traveling at 265 mph, Jerrie could make that flight in three and a half hours.

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The day after the assassination Edwin Lopez and Dan Hardway, “Oswald, the CIA and Mexico City, aka the Lopez Report,” for the HSCA, January 2, 1979, RIF# 180-10110-10484, pp. 213–14.

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the station didn’t respond Ray Warren to the Review Staff, “SSC Request” (memo), February 2, 1976, RIF# 104-10310-10076.

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10.5 Life Magazine

Soviet or Cuban involvement “Johnson Feared War at Kennedy Death, Earl Warren Said,” New York Times, December 9, 1972.

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penning a blistering op-ed Clare Boothe Luce, “Some People Simply Never Get the Message: The U.S. Team Is Still Warming Up the Bench,” Life, June 28, 1963, pp. 31–33.

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Zellerbach was on his deathbed “James D. Zellerbach Dies at 71,” New York Times, August 4, 1963.

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“William Harvey, COS Rome” Palmer, untitled, July 28, 1978, RIF# 180-10143-10362. See also “Request for Approval or Investigative Action for Clare Boothe Luce” (form), July 26, 1963, RIF# 104-10120-10418.

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The agency okayed Harvey’s request Deputy director of security to redacted, “Luce, Clare Boothe,” August 8, 1963, RIF# 104-10120-10417.

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speedboat harassment campaign against Cuba Sylvia Jukes Morris, Price of Fame: The Honorable Clare Boothe Luce (New York: Random House, 2014), pp. 514–37.

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JFK’s perceived missteps on Cuba Clare Boothe Luce, “Kennedy Doctrine on Cuba Has Echoes of Eisenhower and Truman,” Los Angeles Times, October 3, 1962. See also Clare Boothe Luce, “Cuba and the Unfaced Truth—Our Global Double Bind,” Life, October 5, 1962.

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“In view of candidate Kennedy’s profound” “Clare Boothe Luce Blames Cuba Plight on President,” Boston Globe, September 30, 1962.

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Life instantly bought the film Alexandra Zapruder, 26 Seconds: A Personal History of the Zapruder Film (New York: Hachette, 2016), chap. 3.

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a sequence that artfully excised “The Assassination of President Kennedy,” Life, November 29, 1963, pp. 24–27.

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one had to be present Zapruder, 26 Seconds, pp. 198–201.

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What Harvey wanted from Boothe Luce “Security File on Clare Boothe Luce,” RIF# 1993.08.13.18:07:26:900059. Some withheld documents are likely to be related to Harvey’s interest in Boothe Luce.

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she was flying regularly for Life Jo Werne, “For and About Women—Jerrie Cobb,” Miami Herald, April 18, 1965.

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10.6 Termination

an article in Jerrie’s hometown “Cobb Quits Firm,” Oklahoma City Times, November 22, 1963.

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“the most remote location on earth” Jerrie Cobb, interview by the author, March 12, 2010.

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really didn’t happen that way Early in January 1964, Jerrie received a special delivery of a parchment scroll that was forwarded to her by the U.S. embassy in Mexico City, the same embassy that housed the CIA station where June Cobb was based. Presumably, this was a gift to Jerrie from a Mexican citizen: Robert Sayre, Office of Mexican Affairs, to Jerrie Cobb (letter), January 9, 1964, Papers of Jerrie Cobb, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University.

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more letters about women in space Jerrie Cobb to President Lyndon Baines Johnson (letter), February 10, 1964, and Jerrie Cobb to Clinton Anderson (letter), February 11, 1964, both in NASA HQ Historical Archives.

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QJWIN got their pink slip Luxembourg to HQS, “QJWIN Termination,” April 24, 1964, RIF# 104-10054-10104.

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“Well, I finally made the leap” Jerrie Cobb to Betty Greene of Mission Aviation Fellowship (letter), April 22, 1964, Records of the Mission Aviation Fellowship, Billy Graham Center, Wheaton College.

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Johnson appointed Jerrie and Jean Pearson “32 Women Named to Advisory Unit,” Washington Star, May 6, 1964. See also the photograph of Jerrie Cobb and Jean Pearson with numerous other female aviators, May 1, 1964, Oklahoma City, International Women’s Air and Space Museum.

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“Your special skills and qualifications” President Lyndon Baines Johnson to Jerrie Cobb (letter), March 10, 1964, NASA HQ Historical Archives.

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charitable trips to the Amazon “Llega a Lima, Unica Mujer Norteamericana Quien Puede Hacer Vuelos Espaciales,” El Comercio (Lima, Peru), July 18, 1964, Papers of Jerrie Cobb, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University.

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ferrying a Helio Courier down to “Jerrie Flies Church Gift to Colombia,” Daily Oklahoman, October 10, 1964.

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Two months later she was back Jerrie moved in with Jane Rieker in Florida in November 1964. Jo Werne, “Jerrie Cobb—For and About Women,” Miami Herald, April 18, 1965.

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“round up” HQS to Brussels (for Luxembourg), “Request You Make Brief Round Up of QJWIN Project and Activities” (cable), October 18, 1964, RIF# 104-10185-10331.

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the chief had already left Brussels to HQS, “Rozeney Departed Le Havre 28 Oct. Plans Be HQS” (cable), October 29, 1964, RIF# 104-10185-10332.

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headquarters told Luxembourg to destroy the HQS to Brussels, “Pls Destroy Dir 60123 and Brus 1234” (cable), October 29, 1964, RIF# 104-10185-10333.

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Interlude 10: Eclipse

The plan was for us to Author’s trip to Missouri and Kansas with Jerrie Cobb, August 18–21, 2017.

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park was dedicated to the aviators International Forest of Friendship, Atchison, Kansas. The Moon Tree in the center of the forest grew from a seed that was carried to the moon by the astronauts on Apollo 14.

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she had an identifying scar Mexico City to HQS, “Viola June Cobb” (dispatch), August 23, 1962, RIF# 104-10175-10365. Cobb’s PRQ is on p. 1.

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published a lengthy article Isadore Snapper, M.D., “American Mucocutaneous Leishmaniasis Successfully Treated with 2-Hydroxystilbamidine,” American Journal of Medicine, November 1952.

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to record June’s leishmaniasis scar See Appendix 2.

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EPILOGUE

pleaded with me to drop everything Jerrie Cobb to the author (emails), June 2 and 3, 2018.

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a shadow of the figure she’d Author’s visit to the home of Jerrie Cobb in Sun Center City, Florida, June 4–7, 2018.

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Ruth told me all about it Ruth Lummis, conversation with the author, June 4, 2018.

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I’d been on the receiving end “Ruth Lummis” to the author (email), August 24, 2007.

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“Ruth” answered again, saying she was “Ruth Lummis” to the author (email), February 23, 2008.

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Jerrie Cobb died on Katharine Q. Seelye, “Jerrie Cobb, Who Found a Glass Ceiling in Space, Dies,” New York Times, April 19, 2019.

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APPENDIX 1: THE FOREARM SCAR

upon my return from seeing Jerrie’s Author’s visit to the home of Jerrie Cobb in Sun City Center, Florida, November 2–3, 2012.

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I surreptitiously took this picture of Author’s trip with Jerrie Cobb to Cozumel, Mexico, December 1–7, 2013. The photo was taken on December 5, 2013.

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That’s when she told me that Author’s trip with Jerrie Cobb across the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, March 24–31, 2015. This conversation took place on March 28 or 29, 2015, at the dock in Puerto Morelos.

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In fact, her scarless left arm “A Lady Proves She’s Fit for Space Flight,” Life, August 29, 1960, pp. 72–75.

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Taaffe’s letter to Robert Kennedy Catherine Taaffe to Robert F. Kennedy (letter), April 24, 1961, in Lesar FBI FOIA Release on Catherine Taaffe, August 29, 2008, p. 479.

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APPENDIX 2: THE CLAVICLE SCAR

This notation was made over See Cobb’s PRQ in Mexico City to HQS, “Viola June Cobb” (dispatch), August 23, 1962, RIF# 104-10175-10365, p. 1.

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images of June appeared in Isadore Snapper, M.D., “American Mucocutaneous Leishmaniasis Successfully Treated with 2-Hydroxystilbamidine,” American Journal of Medicine, November 1952.

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the similar scar on Jerrie Cobb’s Author’s trip to Missouri and Kansas with Jerrie Cobb, August 18–21, 2017.

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PHOTOGRAPH CREDITS

1A Photographer unknown, Jerrie Cobb Papers; Schlesinger Library.

2A AP Wire Photo, National Archives; The JFK Assassination Records Collection.

2B National Archives; The JFK Assassination Records Collection.

2C National Archives; The JFK Assassination Records Collection.

2D Mary Haverstick.

2E Mary Haverstick.

2F (1) Photographer unknown, Jerrie Cobb Papers; Schlesinger Library. (2) Photographer unknown, Jerrie Cobb Papers; Schlesinger Library. (3) Photographer unknown, Jerrie Cobb Papers; Schlesinger Library. (4) Photographer unknown, Jerrie Cobb Papers; Schlesinger Library. (5) Photographer unknown, 99s Museum of Women Pilots. (6) Photographer unknown, “Woman into Space” Jerrie Cobb and Jane Rieker, 1963. (7) Photographer unknown, Jerrie Cobb Papers; Schlesinger Library. (8) Photographer unknown, Oklahoma Historical Society. (9) Photographer unknown, Toronto Telegram. (10) Photographer unknown, General Motors. (11) Photographer: Richard Cobb, Daily Oklahoman. (12) Photographer unknown, Jerrie Cobb Papers; Schlesinger Library. (13) AP Wire Photo. (14) Photographer: Ralph Crane, LIFE. (15) Photographer: Ralph Crane, LIFE. (16) Photographer unknown, Jerrie Cobb Papers; Schlesinger Library. (17) Photographer: A Y Owen, LIFE. (18) Photographer unknown, International Women’s Air and Space Museum. (19) Photographer unknown, Jerrie Cobb Papers; Schlesinger Library. (20) Photographer unknown, Oklahoma Historical Society. (21) Photographer unknown, Jerrie Cobb Papers; Schlesinger Library. (22) Photographer unknown, International Women’s Air and Space Museum. (23) Photographer unknown, Jerrie Cobb Papers; Schlesinger Library. (24) Photographer: Mary Haverstick. (25) Photographer: Mary Haverstick.

2G (1) Photographer unknown, Ponca City High Schools. (2) Photographer unknown, Oklahoma Historical Society. (3) Photographer unknown, Ponca City News. (4) Photographer unknown, Parade Media. (5) Photographer unknown, American Journal of Medicine. (6) Photographer unknown, Parade Media. (7) Photographer unknown, Modern Mexico magazine. (8) Photographer unknown, Hassell Street Press. (9) Photographer unknown, Oklahoma Historical Society. (10) Photographer unknown, Lindisfarne Association.

2H Photographer unknown, John M. Newman’s private collection.

3A FOIA on Catherine Taaffe obtained by James H. Lesar.

3B FOIA on Catherine Taaffe obtained by James H. Lesar.

3C FOIA on Catherine Taaffe obtained by James H. Lesar.

3D (1) Photographer unknown, USAF/USGOV-PD. (2) Photographer unknown, Jerrie Cobb Papers; Schlesinger Library.

3E Mary Haverstick.

3F Mary Haverstick.

3G FOIA on Catherine Taaffe obtained by James H. Lesar.

3H FOIA on Catherine Taaffe obtained by James H. Lesar.

3I Photographer: Lewis McClain, Miami Herald.

3J Photographer unknown, Aiken Standard.

3K FOIA on Catherine Taaffe obtained by James H. Lesar.

3L FOIA on Catherine Taaffe obtained by James H. Lesar.

4A National Archives; The JFK Assassination Records Collection.

4B Photographer unknown, Jerrie Cobb Papers, Schlesinger Library.

4C Photographer: Maria Muchmore, AP News.

5A National Archives; The JFK Assassination Records Collection.

5B Photographer unknown, Grentz Echo.

6A National Archives; The JFK Assassination Records Collection.

6BMary Haverstick.

6C National Archives; The JFK Assassination Records Collection.

6D (1) Photographer unknown, Wilkes Barre Times Leader. (2) Photographer unknown, National Archives; The JFK Assassination Records Collection.

6E Photographer unknown, Jerrie Cobb Papers; Schlesinger Library.

6FNational Archives; The JFK Assassination Records Collection.

6G(1) National Archives; The JFK Assassination Records Collection. (2) Mary Haverstick’s Collection.

7A National Archives; The JFK Assassination Records Collection.

7BPhotographer unknown, Ponca City News.

7C (1) National Archives; The JFK Assassination Records Collection. (2) Mary Haverstick’s Collection.

8ANew York Daily News, September 18, 1960.

9A National Archives; The JFK Assassination Records Collection.

9B (1) Photographer unknown, Detroit Free Press. (2) Photographer: Arden Wilfong, NASA.

9C National Archives; The JFK Assassination Records Collection.

9D (1) Photographer unknown, Grosse Point News. (2) Photographer unknown, University of Colorado.

9E National Archives; The JFK Assassination Records Collection.

9FMary Haverstick.

9GMary Haverstick.

9H National Archives; The JFK Assassination Records Collection.

9I(1) National Archives; The JFK Assassination Records Collection. (2) Mary Haverstick’s Collection.

9J Photographers unknown, Grove Press.

9KNational Archives; The JFK Assassination Records Collection.

9LPhotographer: Mary Haverstick; John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

9M National Archives; The JFK Assassination Records Collection.

9NPhotographer unknown, Jerrie Cobb Papers; Schlesinger Library.

9O(1) Photographer unknown, Loyola University. (2) Photographer unknown, WFAA-TV.

9P(1) Photographer unknown, Louisiana State University. (2) Photographer unknown, WFAA-TV.

10A Photographer: Maria Muchmore, AP News.

10B Photographer: Charles L. Bronson, The Sixth Floor Museum.

10C Photographer: Wilma Bond.

11A Photographer: Mary Haverstick.

11BPhotographer: Mary Haverstick.

11C FOIA on Catherine Taaffe obtained by James H. Lesar.

11D National Archives; The JFK Assassination Records Collection.

11E Photographer unknown, American Journal of Medicine.

11F (1) Photographer unknown, American Journal of Medicine. (2) Photographer: Mary Haverstick.

INDEX

The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of the book. Each link will take you to the beginning of the corresponding print page. You may need to scroll forward from that location to find the corresponding reference on your e-reader.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

A

Ackmann, Martha, x–xi

action (term), 265–66

Aero Commander, 55fig, 82, 145, 183–84, 334–35, 336–37, 388

agent (term), 425n41

agranulocytosis, 82

Aiken Standard, 92fig

Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA), 99–100

Al Smith Dinner, 239

Albarelli, Hank, 248n191

Alexandria, Diane, 313

aliases. See also individual aliases

definition of, 42–43

Taaffe and, 71–72

Allen, Robert, 344

Allen, William, 380

Almost Mercury (screenplay), 418n3

Altman, Oliver, 177–78, 179

AMCOO, 85, 198

AMDOFF/1, 208

American Astronautical Society, 278, 492n326

American Presidency Project, 469–70n239

American Women’s Transcontinental Air Race, 477n278

AMTHUG, 43

AMUPAS, 43–44, 192, 194, 290

anchor points, 48–49

Anderson, Jack, 316–17, 357, 386

Angleton, James, 38, 122, 180, 281

Anti-Cocoa League, 418n6

Apollo 14, 507n395

Arbenz, Jacobo, 52, 76, 88

Arévolo, Juan José, 43, 76, 228

art dealership, QJWIN and, 364

Artime, Manuel, 167, 435n85

Assassination & Mrs. Paine, The, 495n337

Assassination Archives and Research Center, 72, 131

assassination program of CIA, 140–44, 146–48, 158, 165–66, 174, 176, 260–61

assassination weaponry, 266–68, 282–83, 376–77. See also Magic Button, The

atlatl, 363–64

atomic bomb/materials, 146, 147, 152, 153–54, 258

AUDA-234 (missing dispatch), 173

Aufhauser, Alfred, 420n9, 448n152

Aviation Space Writers Association, 477n278

B

Babushka, 138–39, 138fig, 369–70, 371–80, 372fig, 378fig, 388

backstops, 61

Baker, Marrion, 381

Balletti, Arthur, 302, 486n306

Baran, Wanda (later Vincent), 150–58, 155fig, 172–73, 257, 323

Barletta, Aldo, 302

Barnes, William S., 235–38, 239, 240, 253, 284, 298

Batista, Fulgencio, 230, 315

Bay of Pigs, 191–92, 223–24, 251, 254, 259, 284, 413, 413fig

Bell, Mark, 379, 504n379

Bell Helicopter, 326, 335–40, 336fig

Berle, Adolf, 471n241

Bermudez, Alejandro, 462n205

Bernet, Ed, 492n328

Beverly Crest, 304

Bezos, Jeff, 319

Biden, Joe, 37

Bissell, Richard, 174, 176, 179, 200, 255, 256, 261, 263, 268, 269

Blakey, Robert, 444n131

blowgun, 363–64

Blue Origin, 319

Boothe Luce, Clare, 386–87

Bowles, Lucy, 429n68

Braniff Aviation, 69

Breen, Joseph I., Jr., 308

Brehm, Charles, 372, 374, 379

Britten-Norman Islander bush plane, 360

Bronson film, 373, 375, 375fig, 502n371

Bush, George H. W., 251

Bush, George W., 251

Butler, Rosalie, 464n210

Butler, The, 254

C

Cagle, Myrtle, x

Calvillo, Manuel, 113–14, 115, 116–17, 120, 128, 129fig, 386

Calvo-Roth, Fortuna, 62–65, 109, 314

Camp King, 287

Campbell, Judy, 305–12, 307fig, 310fig

Capri Hotel, 216

Carousel, 304

Castro, Fidel. See also Cuba; Orta, Juan

assassination plots targeting, 142, 145, 191–95, 198–99, 210. See also Orta, Juan

attempts to contact, 62

cryptonym for, 43

efforts to unseat, 52

Jerrie and, 218–20

June and, 6, 9, 12–13, 37, 49, 227, 228

Kennedy campaign and, 230, 233

Oswald and, 112

plan to blame for assassination, 384–85

Taaffe and, 72–73, 75, 83, 86–92, 152

as threat, 144–45

Trafficante and, 190

warplanes and, 88–89

Castro, Raúl, 37, 87, 88fig, 145, 193

Cathedral of St. John the Divine, 59

Chandler, Jeff, 499n352

“checkerboarding,” 47–49, 48fig, 76, 81

CHESLAK, 449n156

Chiang Kai-Shek, 101, 432n78

Church Committee

assassination plans and, 142

Campbell and, 487n311

criticism of Warren Commission from, 271

Harvey and, 174–75, 255–57, 260, 261, 262, 265–66, 267, 268

Hoover and, 487n310

O’Connell and, 199–200

O’Donnell and, 179

Orta timeline and, 207

Churchill, Winston, 68

CIA. See also ZRRIFLE; individual agents

assassination program of, 140–44, 146–48, 158, 165–66, 174, 176, 260–61

Castro and, 145

civil suit against, 131

compartmentalization and, 41–46

Garro and, 115–17, 120

investigation into June and Jerrie by, 38–41

Jerrie and, 16–19, 38–41

June and, 9, 12–13, 33–34, 37–46, 45fig, 49

Lopez and, 131

Mankel and, 150, 152

in Mexico, 110–11

mob and, 199–202

Oswald and, 271–73

QJWIN and, 171–72

Social Security number request from, 44, 45fig

Trafficante and, 190

Wanda and, 157

Cienfuegos, Camilo, 73, 83–85, 86, 87

Civil Air Patrol, 8, 20, 69–70

Clarkson (agent), 449n156

cobalt smuggling, 153–55, 322–23

Cobb, Jerrie. See also AMUPAS; Baran, Wanda (later Vincent); Cobb, June; QJWIN; Taaffe, Catherine

Aero Commander and, 55fig, 82, 145, 183–84, 334–35, 336–37, 388

after Kennedy assassination, 383–86

in Amazon, 359–60, 388–89

Antarctica and, 102

assassination program of CIA and, 143

author’s meetings with, ix, xii–xiii, 15–16, 97–106

autobiographies of, 85–86, 351–52, 370, 406

blowgun and, 363–64

carefulness of, 396–97

Castro and, 218–20

cat-maiming incident and, 109

checkerboarding and, 48fig, 50fig, 81–82, 81fig

in childhood, 67

CIA and, 16–19, 38–41

classified material from, 4–5, 102–3

in Congo, 145–46

congressional testimony and, 322, 334

cover of in 1961–1962, 318–22

Cuba and, 216–20

death of, 402, 407

decline of, 403–5

eclipse trip and, 395–402

exfiltrations and, 85–86

Fleetways and, 70

Ford and, 351–52

in Fort Worth, 326

in France, 288–89

frugality of, 360–61

getting to know, 28–29

Harvey and, 179

identified as June, 64–65

interview with, 17–28

investigation into, 66–68

jet testing program of, 334–35

Johnson and, 389

June’s congressional testimony and, 315

Kennedy and, 254–55, 332–35

Kennedy campaign and, 234–35, 238–41

KGB and, 354

knowledge of June and, 19–24

marksmanship of, 370–71

in Mexico, 242–53, 353, 354–56

in Miami, 213–15

motivations for continued research on, 30–32

on motorcade route, 327–28

National Aviation Hall of Fame and, 159–61, 162–63

Oswald and, 272

Pearson and, 278–79

photographic record of, 53–57, 54–56fig

photographs of, 6fig, 54fig, 55fig, 56fig, 58fig, 78fig, 130fig, 183fig, 214fig, 279fig, 336fig

possible food poisoning from, 366–67, 394

potential conflict with June and, 179–80

pre-Columbian gold and, 361–65

proposed movie on, 135–36

QJWIN and, 169, 170fig, 171, 182–86, 185fig, 214–15

reclusiveness of, 160, 388

at Redbird Airport, 24–28, 369–70, 382–83

Russians and, 354–55

scars of, 104, 411–13, 411fig, 412fig, 416fig

screenplay development and, 3

signature of, 185fig, 186, 301fig

similarities between June and, 6–10

similarities between Taaffe and, 77–79

space press clipping about, 40fig

stipulations from, xiii–xiv

timeline for, 46–51

traveling with, 187–90

truth of, 391–93

at Tyndall World Wide Weapons Meet, 83

ZRRIFLE and, 357

Cobb, June. See also Cobb, Jerrie; QJWIN

after departure from Cuba, 166

aliases of, 43fig, 45, 167

arrival of from Cuba, 231fig

assassination program of CIA and, 143, 148

attempts to find someone to identify, 61–65

Barnes and, 235–38

checkerboarding example and, 48fig, 50fig

in childhood, 67

CIA and, 9, 12–13, 33–34, 37–46, 45fig, 49

Cienfuegos and, 84–85

clavicle scar of, 414–16, 414fig, 415fig, 416fig

communism and, 314

congressional testimony and, 315–16

cover of in 1961–1962, 312–18

cryptonyms of, 43–44

in Cuba, 80, 80fig, 81fig, 292–93

defectors and, 274–76, 324

discovery of, 5–7

documents released about, 107

dust jacket photo of, 312–14

early aviation ties of, 69–70

Garro and, 107–9, 114–18, 122–26, 127, 131–32

Goodwin and, 229–32

hairstyle of, 64

Harvey and, 178–79

Jerrie’s knowledge of, 19–24

Kennedy and, 224–29

Kennedy campaign and, 253

KGB and, 348–50

leishmaniasis and, 397, 414–16, 415fig

loaning of name by, 45–46

Lopez Report and, 129–31

memo about, 117–18

memo written by, 115–16

in Mexico, 108, 111, 287–90

of New York City, 57, 59–60

Orta and, 191, 192–93, 194–99, 202–10, 254, 297

photographs/photographic record of, 57, 60–61, 61fig

Pierson’s disinformation on, 289–90

potential conflict with Jerrie and, 179–80

preparations for assignment and, 166–69

protection needed for, 37

pseudonym of, 44

QJWIN and, 169–71, 170fig, 212, 257–58, 293–301, 296fig, 299fig, 370

search for information on, 11–14

similarities between Jerrie and, 6–10

similarities between Taaffe and, 75–77

similarities between Wanda and, 157–58

Social Security numbers of, 44, 45fig, 298

Southworth and, 91

sterile phone line for, 166–67

Taaffe and, 193–94

timeline for, 46–51

Trafficante and, 190

true name of, 44

201 file of, 265, 331

ZRRIFLE and, 357

Cochran, Jackie, xiii, 278, 318, 354, 480–81n288

code names, definition of, 42. See also open code; individual code names

Cold War, 141, 144, 223, 245–46

Collins, Eileen, 160, 161, 162

Columbia Restaurant, 190

Committee on Internal Security, 315

compartmentalization, 41–42

Congo, 144, 145–46, 148, 150, 153, 164–65, 169–71, 296–97. See also Lumumba, Patrice

congressional testimony

Jerrie’s, 322, 334

June’s, 58fig, 315–16

Corwin, Joan, 45

Corwin, June, 45, 167, 289, 292

Counterintelligence Division, 274, 275

Crawford, Janice, 422n10

credit check, 39–40

Crickard, Wanda, 173

Cronkite, Walter, 383

Croughs, Camille, 154, 155, 156

cryptonyms, 42, 43–44

Cuba. See also Castro, Fidel; Orta, Juan

Bay of Pigs, 191–92, 223–24, 251, 254, 259, 284, 413, 413fig

Cobb’s Kennedy speech on, 226–28

Jerrie and, 216–20

June in, 80, 80fig, 81fig, 292–93

Kennedy and, 192, 223–29

nuclear weapons and, 144

Cuban Missile Crisis, 259

Cubana aircraft, 384–86

Cushman, Robert, 420–21n9

cutout arrangements, 117, 157, 165

D

Dakar, 171–74

Dallas Armed Forces Day Parade, 327

dangles, 355

Darr School of Aeronautics, 68, 69

de Peralta, Armando, 448n152

Death JFK: Dealey Plaza, 137

defectors. See also Martin, William; Mitchell, Bernon

defecting in place, 192

false, 270–76, 345

internal, 344–45. See also Oswald, Lee Harvey

Delidaise, François, 286, 287

Detroit Free Press, 277, 279, 279fig

Diaz Lanz, Pedro, 435n85

Dictabelt analysis, 372, 375

disguise, elements of, 50–53

Division D, 146–47, 174, 175–76, 256

Doolittle, James, 35, 37

double agents, 203–4

Dulles, Allen, 145, 146, 164, 224, 264

Duran, Ruban, 119

Duran, Silvia, 111, 112, 113, 115, 116, 119, 353, 385

E

Earhart, Amelia, 390, 395

eclipse trip, 395–402

Edwards, Sheffield, 200, 461–62n202, 487–88n312

Eisenhower, Dwight D., 143, 146, 164, 192, 232–33, 258, 259, 423–24n35

ELINT (Electronic Intelligence), 267–68

Enigma encryption, 74–75

Escalante, Fabian, 248n191

ESLARD, 43

espionage, false identities in, 33–38

exfiltrations, 83–86

F

F-47 fighters, 78fig

FAA Women’s Advisory Panel, 56fig, 389, 477n278

Failde, Delia, 85

Fair Play for Cuba Committee, 312, 313, 347

false defectors, 270–76, 345

false identities, 34–38, 41–43. See also individual identities

FBI

Campbell and, 308–11, 309fig

Garro and, 113, 115–16, 118–22

June and, 324

Taaffe and, 72, 73, 73fig, 76, 77, 87, 89, 90fig, 94, 94fig

undercover practices of, 36

Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 76, 149, 150, 152, 158, 420n9

Fédération Aéronautique, 337, 354

Ferrell, Mary, 382, 423n14

Ferreto, Judith, 354

Field Double Agent Guide, 203–4

FLATS (First Lady Astronaut Trainees), 421n10, 489n315

Fleetways, 54fig, 70, 77–78, 85, 99, 351–52, 420n9, 429n68

Flickinger, Don, 278

Flying Tigers, 100–101

Flynn, Errol, 218–19

Fontainebleau Hotel, 201, 213, 214

Fonzi, Gaeton, 272

Ford, Jack, 77, 79, 351, 419n8, 429n68, 432n78

Ford, Mary Zerbel, 351–52

Ford, Pamela, 499n351

Francis, Arlene, 420n9

Freedman, Sam, 205–7, 209, 313

Friedman, Maurice, 304

Friedman, Sam, 206, 210

frog logo, 361

Frontier Casino, 304

Funk, Wally, 319

G

Gaffney, George, 450n158

Gagarin, Yuri, 354

Gaillard, Rolland, 285–86, 302

Garrison, Jim, 388

Garro, Elena

background of, 109–11

cat-maiming incident and, 113–18

Congressional investigation and, 126–28

June and, 107–9, 112, 114–18, 122–26, 127, 131–32, 420n9

Lopez Report and, 128–32

Oswald and, 111–14, 115–16, 118–22, 353, 385

Gartoni, Henri, 303–4

Gener, Rafael, 201, 203

Gesto, Rafael, 203, 205, 285, 313

Giancana, Sam, 200–202, 204, 206, 210, 213, 305, 306, 307, 311

Gibson, Richard, 168–69, 171, 312–13, 497n347

Glenn, John, xi–xii, xiii, 280, 333

“Gold Before Columbus” exhibition, 364–65

Goldsmith, Mr., 71

Golitsin, Anatoli, 274

Good, Max, 495n337

Goodwin, Richard, 229–34, 237–38, 239, 240–41, 253

Goodyear blimp, 213, 214fig

Gordevitch, Igor, 63, 64

Gottlieb, Sidney, 165, 267–69, 283

GPFLOOR, 384–86

GPIDEAL, 43

grassy knoll, shot from, 375–76

Greenbrier, 371

Grenz Echo, 155fig

Grosse Point News, 280

Grossman, Carl, 286–87, 329

Guatemala, 76

Guevara, Che, 73, 84, 144, 219

Gun Club at the Greenbrier, 371

H

Hagerty, James C., 143

Hall, Virginia, 437n92

Hardway, Dan, 126, 131

Harmon Trophy, 56fig

Harvey, William

assassination capability development and, 146, 153, 260–61

assassination weaponry and, 283, 369, 376, 377

Boothe Luce and, 386–87, 388

call letters of, 176fig

Congo and, 173–80, 182, 453n172

defectors and, 275, 276

description of, 174

“Jeri” and, 184–85

July 2 decision and, 328–30

June and, 370

June’s congressional testimony and, 315

motorcade route and, 328

Orta operation and, 208, 210, 282

photograph of, 177fig

QJWIN and, 149, 158, 210–11, 213, 283–84, 288, 322–23, 325, 326–27, 371

recruitment and, 287

Task Force W and, 293

Walker and, 346–47

weaponry and, 267, 267fig

ZRRIFLE and, 255–57, 261, 262, 263, 265–70, 331–32, 345, 346, 354

Helio Courier, 389

Helms, Richard, 263

Hemming, Gerry, 280, 281fig

Hermsdorf, Henry, 63, 64, 204

heroin ring, 155–58, 190

Herran Olozaga, Rafael, 190, 203, 419n8, 450n158

Hill, Jean, 372, 379–80

Hitt, Dick, 492n328

Hofmeister, Heath, 67, 68

Hoover, J. Edgar, 73, 87, 94, 311, 487n310

hospital question/comment, 366–67, 394

Hotel de Crillon, 480–81n288

Hotel Nacional, 217

House Select Committee on Assassinations, 109, 126, 372, 385, 421n10

Hugh, 302

Hunter Hawker jets, 88–89

I

impersonation, tactic of, 52. See also individual people impersonated

Incan gold, 361–65

Industrial Raw Materials, 448n152

INRA (Institute of Agrarian Reform), 75–76, 193, 195, 462n203

International Forest of Friendship, 507n395

INTERPOL, 449n156

isosceles stance, 373

J

Jabara, James, 85

Javits, Jacob, 234–35

Jerrie Cobb Foundation, 360, 362, 367–68, 406

Jet Commander, 334–35

JFK Assassination Records Collection, 12, 14, 34, 37, 74, 80, 124, 141, 190

JFK Assassination Review Board, 35

JFK: Destiny Betrayed, 272, 388

Joannides, George, 131

Johnson, Lyndon, 321, 344, 383, 389

Judith Exner: My Story (Exner), 306

July 2 decision, 328–32

K

Katanga Province, 146

Kempton, Murray, 284

Kennedy, John F. See also Kennedy assassination; ZRRIFLE

Boothe Luce’s criticism of, 387

campaign of, 232–35, 237–41

cryptonym of, 43

Cuba and, 192, 223–29

death of pronounced, 382

election of, 241

in France, 288–89

inauguration of, 254–55

Jerrie and, 305, 322, 332–35

Judy Campbell and, 306–7, 309–10

presidency of, 258–59

Kennedy, Robert, 109, 114, 115, 232, 271, 284, 310, 311, 346, 413fig

Kennedy assassination. See also Babushka; Kennedy, John F.; Oswald, Lee Harvey; ZRRIFLE

author’s memory of, 98

congressional investigation into, 421n10

fear of knowledge of, 30

film footage from, 137, 138, 138fig, 372fig, 373–76, 377, 379, 387–88, 502n371, 502–3n371, 503n375, 504n379

Jerrie and, 26–28, 136

June and, 5, 13, 14, 23–24

motive for, 251

shots fired during, 371–72

similarities between June and Jerrie regarding, 10

witnesses to, 372–73

Kennedy White Paper, 230

KGB, 52, 110–11, 273, 348–50, 353–54

Khrushchev, Nikita, 259, 349

King, J. C., 145

King, Martin Luther, 223

Kortrijk Public Library, Belgium, 154

Kostikov, Valeri, 354, 355–56, 357

KUCLUB, 291

L

La Cabaña prison, 217–18

Lady Takes a Flyer, 499n352

Lancaster General Hospital, 366

Larson, Rolf, 116, 118

Ledford, Jack, 267–68, 269

Legoux, Joseph, 285–86

leishmaniasis, 58fig, 397, 415fig

LeMay, Curtis, 258–59, 260

Lennox, Marjorie, 64

Lesar, Jim, 72

Lewine, John, 313–14

libraries, author’s experiences in, 390

LICOOKY/LICOOKIE, 43–44

Life

Jerrie and, 39, 164–65, 318, 412–13

Oswald and, 346

Oswald’s family and, 328

photograph from, 55fig

Redbird Airport story and, 26, 27, 136, 139, 248–49, 370, 386–87

Zapruder film and, 387–88

Lincoln, Evelyn, 309, 390

Lindisfarne Association, 59, 421n10

LINK simulator, 69

Linkletter, Art, 420n9

Lloyd, George, 389

Long, Hazel, 40, 41

Lopez, Ed, 126–28, 444n131

Lopez Report, 125, 128–32, 129fig

Los Angeles Times, 93

Losada, Jorge, 63, 64, 463n206

Lovelace, Randolph, 278

Lovelace Clinic, 55fig, 171

Luce, Henry, 386

Lummis, Ruth

eclipse trip and, 394, 395, 400, 401

food poisoning incident and, 366

Jerrie’s decline and, 403–7

role of, 188

traveling with, 188, 189–90, 217, 243

World War II and, 245–47

Lumumba, Patrice

assassination plans regarding, 142, 143, 147–48, 164–66, 168, 171–74, 176–77

Dulles and, 264

execution of, 180–82, 265

Harvey and, 256

Jerrie and, 183, 184

rise to power of, 145–46

ZRRIFLE and, 262

M

Magic Button, The, 267, 283, 331, 369–77

Maheu, Robert, 200–201, 214, 461–62n202, 486n306

Mailer, Norman, 475n273

Man Who Knew Too Much, The (Russell), 423n14

manatees, 103–6, 187

Manhattan Project, 146

Mankel, Jose

photograph of, 149fig

QJWIN and, 148–51, 168, 263, 294, 294fig, 295, 370

Wanda and, 152–53, 155–58, 172–73, 323

ZRRIFLE and, 264

MARQUIS, 449n156

Martin, William, 274–76, 292, 324, 344

Martinez, Alejandro, 207

Martinez, Harold, 207

Mary Ferrell Foundation, 418n5

Masferrer, Rolando, 193

MASTIF trainer, 279, 279fig

Mayan gold, 361–65

McCone, John, 271

McNeill-Leicester, Elizabeth, 454n173

Mendez, Jonna, 51–52

Mercury 13, 159, 160, 161–62, 318–19, 320, 321, 332, 386. See also NASA; individual women

Mercury 13 (documentary), 417nxi

Mercury 13, The (Ackmann), x–xi

Mérida, 243

metallurgical business, Vincents’, 150–51, 172–73

MI6, 349–50, 457n183

Miami Herald, 90–91, 91fig, 388

MiGs, 89

Mission Aviation Fellowship, 186, 389

Mitchell, Bernon, 274–76, 292, 324, 344

mob, CIA and, 199–202. See also individual mobsters

Mobutu Sese Seko, 165, 180–82

mole-hunting operations, Oswald and, 274

Molina the Hook, 169

Moon Tree, 395–96, 399

Moorman, Mary, 372, 379

Morgan, Vicky, 84

Morgan, William, 13, 84, 218

Morning Call (Allentown, PA), 498–99n351

motorcade route, scouting of, 327–28

Muchmore, Marie, 138, 373

Muchmore film, 138fig, 372fig, 373–76, 502–3n371

Mulroney, Michael, 179

Murret, Marilyn, 340–45, 341fig, 342fig

Museo del Oro in Bogotá, 361–62

Mussolini, Benito, 286

N

NASA, x–xii, xiii, 105, 161–62, 165, 318–22, 332–35

National Aeronautical Association, 477n278

National Archives, 34, 423n34

National Aviation Hall of Fame, 8, 86, 159–61, 162–63

Nazis, 246–47

New York Daily News, 231fig

New York Times, The, 194, 199, 233, 238, 315

Newman, John

assistance from, 11–12

inability of to identify June, 11, 50

June and, 113

Oswald and, 272, 274

photograph mailed to, 60, 61fig, 65

Taaffe and, 72, 74, 75

timeline research by, 434n82

Ninety-Nines, 477n278

Nixon, Richard, 56fig, 223–24, 233, 235–38, 239, 240, 241

Nobel Peace Prize nomination, 359

Nosenko, Yuri, 274

nuclear weapons/materials, 141, 144, 146, 147, 151, 152, 258–59

O

Obama, Barack, 251, 252

Ocampo, Miguel, 123

O’Connell, James, 199–201, 206, 214

Odio, Eunice, 114, 122, 123–24, 125, 132, 420n9

Odlum, Floyd, 420n9

O’Donnell, Justin, 175, 176–78, 177fig, 179, 180

Office of Strategic Services (OSS), 140

Oliver, Beverly, 378, 444n131

open code, 204, 224, 236, 238, 253, 292–93, 313

Operation Mockingbird, 317

Operation Northwoods, 259

Operation Paperclip, 246

Orta, Juan

covering motives and, 265

defection of, 208fig, 209

June and, 192–99, 203, 204–6, 254, 297

Kennedy and, 223

mob and, 200–202

recruitment of, 191

Trafficante and, 190

ZRRIFLE timeline and, 282

Osequeda, Raul, 312

OSS (Office of Strategic Services), 140

Oswald, Lee Harvey

attempting to return, 288

background of, 270–71

Congressional investigation and, 126

egress of after assassination, 381–83

Fair Play for Cuba Committee and, 312, 313

false defectors and, 270–76

in Fort Worth, 328

FPCC and, 347

Garro and, 13, 111–14, 115–16, 118–22

intelligence covers and, 348

Joannides and, 131

Kostikov and, 354, 356, 357

Lopez Report and, 128

in Mexico City, 353

mother’s attempt to contact, 270

Murret and, 343–44

in New Orleans, 347

Paines and, 337–40

potential escape plan of, 14–15, 25, 384–86

recruitment of, 290–93

return of to U.S., 318, 325–28

rifle and, 345–47

Warren Commission’s conclusion regarding, 108

Oswald, Marguerite, 270

Oswald, Marina, 338, 340, 346

Oswald and the CIA (Newman), 11, 272

P

Page, Eloise, 162

Paine, Michael, 337–40

Paine, Ruth, 337–45, 341fig, 342fig

Pan American airlines, 70

Pappenheim, Fritz, 420n9, 463n206

Parade, 58fig, 316–18

Paris Air Show, 288, 337

Park, Daphne, 457n183

Park Chambers Hotel, 178, 225

Parkland Hospital, 382

Paz, Octavio, 109–10

Peace Corps, 389, 468n232

“Peaceful Uses of Space” conference, 278

Pearson, Jean Hanmer, 56fig, 277–82, 279fig, 281fig, 318, 389, 395

Pease, Lisa, 259, 272

Pellecer, Carlos, 420n9

Pensacola Naval Base, 370

Peralta, Armando, 420n9

Peralta Shipping, 448n152

Perón, Juan, 86

Perry, Huley, 93, 95

Pew, George, 420n9

Phillips, Dave, 8, 52–53, 131, 285–86

Picasso, Pablo, 110

Pierson, Jean

absence of from ZRRIFLE operation, 282

Bay of Pigs and, 284

Counterintelligence Division and, 265, 274

disinformation from, 288–90

Harvey and, 208–9, 275–76, 282–85

investigation into June and Jerrie by, 39, 40–41

on June, 275

June’s congressional testimony and, 315, 316

on June’s potential roles, 166, 166fig

June’s trip and, 292–93, 313

as keeper of secrets, 276

Kennedy campaign and, 225, 227, 230, 239

open code and, 204

Orta operation and, 195, 198, 205–9

Parade article and, 317

payments to June from, 295, 297–98

phone records of, 280fig

presidential election and, 236

as pseudonym, 277

QJWIN timeline and, 178–79, 180

recruitment and, 285–86

Pineinch, Joyce H., 44, 114

Pion, Gilbert, 304–5

Pioneer Women’s Museum, 68

Ponca City, 67–68

Ponca City Retail Merchants Association, 40

Potocki, Anita, 275, 476n276

Powder Puff Derby, 477n278

pre-Columbian gold, 361–65

President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act (1992), 423n34

Presland, Daniel, 175

Price, Joan, 239

Project Seal, 167–68

pseudonyms, 42

PT-23 trainers, 78fig, 79

Q

QJBANNER-5, 322–23, 324

QJWIN. See also Mankel, Jose

assassination weaponry and, 282–83

CIA communications about, 176fig

Congo mission and, 180–82

Dakar assignment and, 171–74

delayed departure of, 225

in Europe, 210–15

Harvey and, 174–78, 288

Jerrie and, 143

July 2 decision and, 329–30

June and, 143, 166, 167, 168, 169, 293–301, 296fig, 299fig, 370

last communications regarding, 389–90

leak of identifying information about, 322–25

mystery of, 140, 158

O’Donnell and, 177–78

operational phases of, 147–48

recruitment and, 283–86, 301–5

relocation of, 325–27, 335

role of, 141–42

Silver and, 156

termination of, 389

timeline for, 170fig

201 file of, 265, 269, 289, 290

Wanda and, 149–50

windfall for, 364

ZRRIFLE and, 255–56, 257–58, 262, 263, 266, 282

Quakerism, 339–40

R

Rabney, James, 448n153, 449n156, 478–79n283

recognition signal, 205, 212

Redbird Airport, 14–15, 24–26, 136–37, 241, 248–53, 272, 369–70, 381–83, 392–93

Reichman, Joe, 492n328

Reissiu, 283

Remembering America (Goodwin), 233

Resew, 269, 283

Rettie, John, 349–50

Revolución, 209

Ride, Sally, x, 13, 321

Rieker, Jane, 26, 249, 389

RIS (Russian Intelligence Services), 269

Rockefeller Commission, 460–61n201

Rockwell, Lew, 420n9

Rodríguez, César, 448n152

Rolland, Jean, 285–86

Rommel, Erwin, 188

Roosevelt, Franklin D., 68

Roselli, Johnny

Campbell and, 305–6, 307, 308, 311

Friedman and, 304

Jerrie and, 213

Orta operation and, 199, 200–202, 210, 302

Santelli and, 331

ZRRIFLE and, 256–57, 285

Rowlett, Frank, 268

Ruby, Jack, 304, 328, 347, 378

Russell, Dick, 423n14

Russo, Gus, 248n191

S

sacred geometry, 396

Sacred Geometry library, 59

Salas, Bobby, 240

Salon Aéronautique. See Fédération Aéronautique

San Antonio Express, 354

Sanchez, Celia, 420n9

Santelli, Jacques, 285–86, 302–3, 329–30, 331

Scaletti, Elsie, 71–72, 75

Schlesinger Library, 391, 457n183

Schweiker, Richard, 271–72

Scott, Paul, 344–45

Scott, Peter Dale, 248n191, 272, 274

Scott, Win, 115, 117, 121, 131, 441n120

secrecy agreements, 18–19, 393

Security Council, 146, 164

Shark and the Sardines, The (Arévalo), 58fig, 205, 227–28, 312–13, 314–15, 316, 357–58, 468n229

Sharp, Clarinda, 45, 312

Sharp, June Cobb, 45, 129, 129fig, 131

shigella, 367

Shinkolobwe uranium mine, 146, 457n183

Shur, Gerald, 35–36

SIGABA, 268

signature characteristics, manipulation of, 50–53

Silver, Arnold

assessment of, 377

CHESLAK and, 449n156

Harvey and, 146

July 2 decision and, 328–30

Mankel and, 149, 153, 157

Oswald’s recruitment and, 291

QJWIN and, 156, 174–75, 176, 184–85, 282–83, 370, 371

recruitment and, 284–87, 301

ZRRIFLE and, 255, 257, 261–66, 268, 270, 330–31

Siminow, Rose, 313, 464n210

Simpich, Bill, 272

Sinatra, Frank, 304, 420n9

Skaggs, Jay, 379

Skorzeny, Ilse, 287

Skorzeny, Otto, 286–87

smuggling of metals, 149–51

Snapper, Dr. Isadore, 397, 415fig, 416fig

Social Security numbers, 44, 45fig

softball, 54fig, 79

Solo Pilot (Cobb), 406

Sooner Queens, 54fig, 79

Sopwith Camels, 391

Sorenson, Ted, 234

Sotheby’s, 362–64, 365

sound barrier, breaking of, 83

Southworth, George, 91

Soviet Union

KGB and, 52, 110–11, 273, 348–50, 353–54

Khrushchev and, 259, 349

Kostikov and, 354, 355–56, 357

Oswald’s defection to, 270–71

plan to blame for assassination, 264–65, 269, 348, 354

Tereshkova and, 351, 354

SpaceX, 319

spot payments, 298–300, 299fig

Sprague, Robert, 259

Staff D, 146–47, 175

Steadman, Bea, 56fig, 321

Stone, Oliver, 30, 272, 388

Strategic Air Command (SAC), 259

Stuart, Lyle, 420n9

Summers, Andrew, 248n191

sundowning, 405

Sweet, Jack, 492n328

“synchronized swimming,” 47, 50fig

T

T-7 warplanes, 54fig

Taaffe, Alexis Francis, 437n93, 437–38n94

Taaffe, Catherine

AMCOO and, 85

assassination program of CIA and, 143

attack on, 90–92, 90fig, 91fig, 413, 413fig

Castro and, 72–73, 83, 86–92, 152, 193, 195

checkerboarding with Jerrie, 81–82, 81fig

children of, 92–93

Cienfuegos and, 84

FBI report on, 72fig

Flying Tigers and, 100–101

paperwork on, 74–75

photographs of, 92fig, 95fig

QJWIN and, 182

reports from, 73fig, 144–45

RFK and, 284

similarities between Jerrie and, 77–79

similarities between June and, 75–77

similarities between Wanda and, 152, 158

theory regarding, 95–96

on timeline, 79–82, 80fig, 81fig

warplanes and, 77–78, 78fig, 88–89, 88fig, 93–94

work of, 74

Taaffe, Jaime, 94–95

Taaffe, James L., 437n93

Taaffe, Peter Dunne, 437n93

Taaffe, Randall, 77, 93

Taaffe, Thomas Bergen, 437n93

Taaffe, William Randal, 437n93

Talbot, David, 272

Tampa Electric, 103

Tanganyikan government, 145–46, 183–84

Tartaglino, Andrew, 156–57

Task Force W, 293

Taylor, Clayton, 308, 309

Taylor, Lillian Bowles, 68–69

Technical Services Division, 267–68

Tereshkova, Valentina, 351, 354

Texas School Book Depository, 270, 381

Thomas, Charles, 120, 121–22, 126, 127–28, 132

Thompson, William Irwin, 427n59

Time-Life, 10

timeline, 46–51, 79–82, 80fig, 81fig

Tippit, J. D., 382

Trafficante, Santos, Jr., 190, 200–202, 216

Tropics Institute, 58fig

true names, 42

Trump, Donald, 37

Truxton, James, 186

Turing, Alan, 74

Turner, Lana, 499n352

Tweedy, Bronson, 165–66, 171, 173

“twin sister” comment, 8, 14, 52–53

twins, creation of, 52

201 files, 265, 269

Tyndall World Wide Weapons Meet, 55fig, 83

U

U-2 spy planes, 268, 269, 270, 273, 478n283

Udvar Hazy Space Shuttle exhibit, 56fig

Uncovering Popov’s Mole (Newman), 272

undercover practices, 36

U.S. Marshals Service, 36

USAID, 389

V

Valentine, Douglas, 248n191

Verona, Tony, 435n85

Vetter, Betty, 280–81, 280fig, 281fig

Vincent, Mr., 150, 151

Vincent, Wanda Baran, 150–58, 172–73, 257, 323

Virgin Atlantic, 319

Vision magazine, 62–63, 65

von Braun, Wernher, 246, 334

W

Walker, Edwin, 346–47

warplanes, espionage involving, 77–78, 78fig, 88–89, 88fig

Warren, Earl, 386

Warren Commission

Baker and, 381

conclusion of, 108, 270

contradictory evidence presented to, 271

Dulles and, 264

Garro and, 117

Hill and, 379

Murret and, 340–41, 342–43, 344

Paine and, 338–39, 342–43

Warren and, 386

Warren Report, 108, 112, 114, 121–22, 126, 503n372

Washington Post, 177–78

WASPs. See Women Airforce Service Pilots

Watergate, 223

Webb, James, 321, 332, 333

Webster, Robert, 273

Weissman, Stephen, 146

Where Angels Tread Lightly (Newman), 75

Whirly Girls aviation club, 337

White, Allen, 121

Whitten, John, 424n37

Wichtrich, Al, 117

Wides, Burt, 267

Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, 177fig

Williams, Susan, 146

Wilson, Annabelle, 45

Wired, 51

Wise, John, 363, 364

witness protection program (WITSEC), 35–36

Witowska, Maria, 195, 203, 204, 209

WITSEC: Inside the Federal Witness Protection Program (Shur), 35–36

Woltman, Rhea, 159, 161, 162–63

Woman into Space (Cobb), 85–86, 278, 351–52, 370

Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs), 99, 277–78

World War II, 99–101, 140, 188, 391

X

X, Malcolm, 223

X-15 flights, 333, 389

Y

Ybor City, 188–90

Z

Zapruder, Abraham, 388

Zapruder film, 373, 374, 377, 387–88, 502n371, 503n375

Zellerbach, James, 386

Zoppi, Tony, 492n328

ZRGRACE, 275

ZRRAGTIME, 291

ZRRIFLE. See also Kennedy assassination; QJWIN

beginning of, 282–86

creation of, 261–70, 273

description of, 257–58

introduction to, 255–57

July 2 decision and, 328–32

motivations for, 258–61

Oswald’s recruitment and, 290–93

progress of, 330–32

QJWIN and, 148, 175

QJWIN’s windfall from, 364

recruitment and, 301–5

rifle and, 345–48

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mary Haverstick is a film director, writer, and cinematographer. Her most notable work as director is Home (2009), which featured Oscar-winning actress Marcia Gay Harden. She is currently chronicling the turbulent political landscape of her home state, Pennsylvania, for a documentary, Tipping Point, PA.

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Blonde Geraldyn (Jerrie) Cobb 29, America’s first woman astronaut, smiles at a New York press conference as she tells of her training in the Project Mercury program.—AP Wirephoto

Spacewoman Ready for Flights with Men

NEW YORK. Aug. 24 (AP)—A blond who may become this Nation’s first spacewoman predicts that men and women will make space flights together.

The view was expressed yesterday by Geraldyn M. (Jerrie) Cobb, 29, of Ponca City, Okla., first woman to pass space flight tests at the Lovelace Foundation in Albuquerque, N. Mex.

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Subject (true name): Viola June Cobb

Cryptonym, Pseudonym, aka Aliases

LICOOKY-1 (C) Formerly AMUPAS-1

Clarinda E. Sharp - alias

Joyce H. Pineinch (P)

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To: Office of Security

Date: 5 August 1963

ATT: Chris Gikas

From: Finance Division/ Compensation and Tax Accounts Branch/ Contract Employees Accounts Section

Subject: Social Security Account Application

Enclosed is Form SS-5, “Application for Social Security Account Number,” for the following individual:

Viola June Cobb

Please furnish us Social Security number for this person through your usual channels.

Lucille F. Twogood

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Subject: Catherine Taaffe

Miscellaneous - Information Concerning

(Nationalities Intelligence)

Mrs. Taaffe, former arms dealer residing in New York City, has been volunteering information to the Bureau for some time regarding conditions in the Caribbean area, particularly Cuba. She has been in contact with other Government agencies including CIA and has made numerous trips between Cuba and the United States contacting leaders of anti-Castro movement. Taaffe appears to be person who revels in intrigue and who appears to have a spy complex. In disseminating information made available by her, we have been attributing it to her directly describing her as individual who has volunteered information in past regarding Cuban situation. Other agencies are well acquainted with her background and activities.

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Mrs. Taaffe advised that on January 21 1959, she had a meeting with Comandante Camilo Cienfuegos who is in charge of Camp Columbia. Mrs. Taaffe stated that from her conversation with Cienfuegos, she has formed the opinion that Cienfuegos is the most intelligent and most reasonable man among the military personnel in Havana. Cienfuegos is desirous of peace in Cuba and wants an end of the “blood letting” and will compromise in order to insure the establishment of peace in Cuba. Mrs. Taaffe also stated that Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the Argentine, has been a source of concern for members of the new government and also for members of the military. She advised that Guevara has caused Fidel Castro much trouble in the past and, in reality, Castro is afraid of Guevara. Mrs. Taaffe stated that Cienfuegos, together with other influential members of the new Cuban government, are taking steps to ease Guevara out of his position as a military leader in the July 26 Movement. Mrs. Taaffe stated that the rumors in Havana indicate that Guevara will soon be leaving Cuba and in all probability will end up in some other Latin American country which is experiencing internal troubles as Guevara is, at heart, a revolutionary.

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Mrs. Taaffe stated that during her discussions with Raul Castro or his aides, she was shown several offers from individuals in the United States to purchase armament and planes for the Cuban Government. She stated she had seen one such offer which was submitted by [redacted] of Bachman Brothers, Rochester, New York. Mrs. Taaffe also stated that she had seen the price list for Russian built Migs which were offered the Cuban Government by Czechoslovakia. Mrs. Taaffe stated that the Migs, according to the list which she saw, were cheaper than the Hunter Hawkers which the Cuban Government desires to purchase.

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Mrs. Taaffe advised that on the night of December 7, 1959, she met with Major Raul Castro, Minister of Defense and two of Castro’s assistants, a Captain Pena Cardoza (Phonetic) and a Lieutenant (First Name Unknown) Douglas. Mrs. Taaffe stated that Raul Castro stated that the Cuban treasury did not have enough money in order to cover the government’s expenses for the month of December, 1959, and asked her if she would attempt to sell some sugar for them. Raul Castro also, according to Taaffe, asked her to take an option on the 17 Sea Furies which belonged to the Cuban Government and attempt to sell them in order that the Government of Cuba can purchase the Hunter Hawkers which had refused them by England. Taaffe advised that Raul Castro told her that they had approximately $11,870,000 in a Swiss bank and claimed that this money belonged to the July 26th Movement.

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Mrs. Taaffe stated she took the authorization from Raul Castro in order to purchase these planes for two reasons:

That she can control the shipments from start to finish.

That she would like to tie up the money that the Cuban Government has in Switzerland.

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Taaffe advised that while at the McAllister Hotel, Miami, after the arrest of [redacted] and [redacted] by the Miami Office, she was most careful in her contacts and in her telephone conversations. Mrs. Taaffe advised that on the evening of 2/12/60 she had called Room Service to have her tray picked up. She stated that about 6 P.M. there was a knock at her door and she thought it was a waiter to pick up the tray; she opened the door and two Cubans, one small and thin, and the other very husky, grabbed her from the back around the neck and hit her shoulder, and the huskier of the two stated that she had betrayed the July 26th Movement and the Cuban revolution and stated that she should do nothing to hurt [redacted] or [redacted] [redacted] and [redacted]. Taaffe stated that the smaller of the two held her left forearm taut while the heavier of the two carved the numerals “26” in her left forearm.

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Cablegram 1/20/59 from Legal Attache, Havana, indicated

Legal Attache had been advised by Embassy official that one Catherine Taaffe, who claimed she was from “Washington office of security” and was “undercover” in Havana, had stated she would see that officials issued identification cards by SIM were removed from positions. Director commented that we should have advised Legal Attache of Taaffe’s visit to Cuba and asked why we did not do so.

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The Committee returned to Mexico City on August 7, 1978 and attempted to locate June Cobb Sharp and Manuel Calvillo on its own. 992/

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Middle-of-the-Road: If she could play this very difficult role, she might be used at a later date in some capacity. However, assuming that she is under suspicion and lost her job for that reason she would be of little use to us operationally even if she did return - her access to target would certainly be limited. (On the other hand, she would probably never be accepted by the counter-revs because she has not declared herself with them.) In the interim, she might be able to pick up some incidental information from the Fair Play For Cuba Committee and its members, but this would be more useful to the Bureau than to us.

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Transmittal Slip

Date 20 D[unreadable] 60

To: OPS

Room no 2509

On 12 Dec we forwarded OIRA 25700 to your branch - now we have received the s/c/attachment and would appreciate it if you would attach it to the dispatch…. .

OPS

Arnold

Silver

Thanks,

CB/mai

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Yank on Fidel Payroll Flies In

June Cobb, 33, an American translator of English literature employed by Cuban Premier Fidel Castro, denied yesterday that she was a Communist. She arrived at International Airport from Havana “for a rest” and said her visit had no connection with Castro’s trip to the UN.

“I translate English literature for the prime minster,” Miss Cobb said of her duties with Castro. She declined to say what kind of literature or what other functions, if any she has in the Cuban government.

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Regarding telephone No. 324-3879 in Palm Springs, the subscriber to which is ELGIN LACKEY, 386 West Racquet Club Road, Palm Springs, California, it has been previously reported that LACKEY has rented this residence.

On November 27, 1961, Miss JUDITH CAMPBELL, 386 East Racquet Club Road, Palm Springs, California, was interviewed by SA J. CLAYTON TAYLOR in connection with an investigation unrelated to instant case. On this occasion CAMPBELL stated that she rents the house at this address from ELGIN LACKEY and as of November 27, 1961, had rented it for approximately two months. CAMPBELL furnished her name as Miss JUDITH CAMPBELL. SA TAYLOR observed this residence was a large home with servant’s quarters and he observed that CAMPBELL appeared to be about 25 to 30 years of age having blonde hair and to be a very attractive woman.

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April 24, 1961

My dear Mr. Kennedy:

My letter may be presumptive but I have heard of women being forgiven for tramping where angels tread lightly.

I am delighted that you have been chosen with [redacted] to review our intelligence methods. Of even more concern is just how it is evaluated.

Since October 1959, I have been pleading with every agency to stress the facts in Cuba in the hopes that the distorted and wishful thinking of the self-interested people would not be the deciding factor in our intervention. The present move was outdated by January 1960 and dubious then. It is inconceivable that anyone abreast the changing climate, with any familiarity of conditions either in Cuba or within the exile groups, could believe the sloppily crude tactics of Guatamala could succeed.

Our President has a presence of history and I admire and respect the grace and dignity with which he assumed the responsibility, but my soul cries in despair and my mind in anger that he was placed in such a position.

I have taken the liberty of enclosing two reports of many that I am sure went into the vast funnel, called “intelligence”. My only compensation, and I assume you unasked for, was to be thrown to the wolves in Miami last February and assaulted by the Castroites; courtesy of some unfathomable thinking on the part of, I am told State, CIA, and FBI.

With kindest regards,

Sincerely,

Catherine Taaffe

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